Input Grid Control

The Input Grid provides an alternative to creating numerous individuals controls and positioning them in a Dashboard by allowing you to create a grid of controls. The grid cells can reference scalar, vector or matrix Data elements, and can be Edit boxes, Check boxes or Combo boxes:

The toolbar button looks like this:

Input Grid Control Toolbar Button

The Input Grid control looks like this when it is added to a Dashboard and selected:

The eight handles allow you to resize the control. For more precise changes, you can also change the width of the control using Ctrl-Left and Ctrl-Right, and change the height using Ctrl-Up and Ctrl-Down. (The default change is 1 pixel at a time. If you press the Shft key, the change is 5 pixels).

Note, however, that resizing the control does not resize the text (labels or numbers) inside the control; it simply adds empty space around the control. The font size for the text and numbers is fixed (they use the default GUI font specified by the operating system).

Double-clicking on the control displays the following properties dialog:

The first step in using the Input Grid control is to specify the type of Data elements that it will be used to control using the Controlled Types drop-list. An Input Grid can control either a specified number of scalar Data elements, a specified number of vector Data elements, or a single Matrix Data element:

The manner in which the Input Grid control is used for each of these types is described in the topics listed below.