You can use an expression to be an attribute of an element.
About this task
To specify
an expression for an element:
Procedure
- Open the attribute list for an element.
- On the navigation bar, click Display.
- Select a view and then select the element.
- For an attribute type, click Edit.
- In the New Value field, type =. Evaluate Expression, Help, List
Business Rules, and List available Attributes options
are displayed.
- To evaluate the expression before you save it, click Evaluate. A window with the result of your expression is displayed.
- Click OK.
Results
In the attribute list, the result of the expression is displayed.
When you edit the attribute value, the expression is displayed. An
attribute with a valid expression is displayed in green. An attribute
with an invalid expression is displayed in red. An attribute might
have an invalid expression if you delete the element the expression
is referring to.
Note: In the following situations, the
results of expressions are not immediately displayed:
- An element tree is displayed either from the Modules menu or the
Display menu. The title of one of the elements in the tree is an expression
that collects its value from an attribute that belongs to another
element in the tree. When the source attribute value is changed, the
title of the first element is also changed. However, the element tree
is not updated; in the tree, the old element title is still displayed.
To display the new element title, from the navigation bar, in the
Modules or Display menus, click the module or view.
- An element tree is displayed from the Display menu. An attribute
in one element is an expression that collects its value from an attribute
that belongs to another element. When the source attribute is changed,
the first attribute value is also changed. This change might cause
the first element to be removed from the view, but the element is
still displayed in the tree. If you click the element you will not
see its attribute values. Instead, an error message is displayed.
To update the tree, from the navigation bar, in the Display menu,
click the view.
- A view is displayed in a Chart from the Visualize menu. You click
one of the element titles to change an attribute. The title attribute
of another element in the view is an expression that collects its
value from the attribute that was changed. The title changes, but
the title is not updated in the chart. To update the chart, from the
navigation bar, in the Visualize menu, click the view.