System name in behavior rules

In behaviors of complex shape types, you can specify a string under System Name that indicates which data point is expected in that slot. If a data point is dragged on this row on the schematic, all other rows with the same string are automatically filled with the same data point.

However, it gets more interesting if the string represents parts of the plant identification code of the component or data point. This allows the system to automatically fill the shape with data points or to create shapes on the schematic automatically in certain circumstances.

Usually, system names contain information about the data point’s location, plant and component (from left to right). The value in the field System Name should match the latter part, i.e. the component and data point identification.

The field System Name supports two different formats:

Regular Expression

Most features of regular expression are supported, for example:

String

Description

.*

Matches a sequence of arbitrary characters.

.{4}

Matches 4 arbitrary characters.

\d{3}

Matches 3 digits.

[A-Z]{2}

Matches 2 upper-case letters.

[A-Z]{2}_\d{3}

Matches 2 upper-case letters, followed by an underscore and 3 digits.
Simplified Expression

If regular expressions are not needed, the following string can be used to match incrementing numbers:

String

Description

?

Matches a single character.

*

Matches a sequence of arbitrary characters.

%L

Matches an arbitrary string of characters (e.g. A or 123). The matched string will be used as a sequence number to identify all data points when generating shapes.

Note

The input will be treated as a simplified expression if either a %L is present or it is not a valid regular expression.

Further reading