Contemporary Control Systems BASview - Manual (Page 25)

TD110500-0MC
25
Control Points
A Control Point, usually referred to as just a "point", is any input, output, variable or property on a device
that a value can be read from, and possibly allows a new value to be written to it.
At least one point is required for the unit to do anything useful. Most systems will have dozens or
hundreds of points. For point types see the
Analog Point Wizard, Digital Point Wizard, Multi-State Point
Wizard, Date/Time Point Wizard and String Point Wizard.
Settings Tab
Label
Label is the name of the item as displayed in the
Device Tree .
All items in the Device Tree are sorted alphabetically by label. Folders can be used to organize items.
Address
The address is the name, number or combination of the two that specifies how to access and interpret
this point. Addressing is different for different types of devices (LonWorks, Modbus, etc.) See
Point
Addressing for information on how to specify the address.
Virtual Point
Check this box to declare this point as "virtual". Virtual points hold a value but are not read or written to a
device so they do not require an address. Their value is maintained internally and can be used anywhere
a normal point can be used. They are normally used with program or calculation objects for smart
setpoint logic or to hold user specified values.
Description
Description is optional text that describes the item. It can be any descriptive text or be left blank.
Point Type
The Point Type specifies how the value should be treated and displayed once it has been read from the device.
The available point types are:

Analog — Any numeric value. Digital values are converted to 0 for OFF and 1 for ON.

Digital — The value is treated as ON or OFF. Any non-zero value is considered ON.

Multi-State — One of a limited set of numeric values such as 1 through 4, or -2 through 15.

String — The value is a string of ASCII characters.

DateTime — The value is a packed binary date, time or combined date/time value.
Although the point type should usually be set to match the actual type of point, it is sometimes useful
to use a different setting. For example, an analog input could be set to a point type of Digital so that any
value other than 0 would be displayed as ON or Active.
Point Class
The Point Class is currently used only for informational purposes and has no real effect on how the value
will be treated or displayed. It may be used for more in a future version so it is recommended that it
always be set to the proper value.
The available point classes are:

Input — The point is a physical input of any type.

Output — The point is a physical output of any type.

Variable — The point is a logical device point — such as a setpoint, programming variable or flag.

Object — The point is an object or other logical data structure.