Release Notes

Project Assist 2.0 for Facilities, Version 10, includes radical feature additions related to page, template, and widget creation. Version 10 also introduces import and export functions and the Project Assist Viewer. This release also includes major improvements and bug fixes for every aspect of Project Assist for Facilities.

Optimization for runtime performance was a major focus of this release and has been greatly improved.

The following are changes to system requirements between Project Assist 2.0, version 7, and Project Assist 2.0, version 10.

• Niagara users can now use either DGLux5 or the the Project Assist Viewer.
• A new DGLux5 installation is recommended. See Installation.

Because of significant improvements to the editing experience, version 10 is strongly recommended for new projects.

There is no backward compatibility for projects created with versions 8 and earlier; projects created with these versions cannot be edited using version 10.

Finished projects do not require updating to version 10.

Project Assist 2.0, version 10, includes new features that radically simplify the process of designing navigation, pages, and templates.

Now you can duplicate a device template. This saves time if you need two similar graphical templates.

The Generic Node module has been replaced by a Page Include module that lets you include either a DG5 file of an external URL in your Project Assist project.

The security of any external domains must be configured to allow access via IFrame. Most domains allow this access.

Version 10 introduces the capability to configure custom actions for click, double-click, and right-click events on objects. Actions are application behaviors that occur in response to events. For example, an action can navigate to a project node or affect a value in the data source.

You can also now override default actions and configure multiple actions to occur in response to the same event.

The following image demonstrates how to customize actions. In this example, a callout is configured to execute a navigation action on left click and a data action on right click.

Now you can add padding around a location page image. This padding allows space for other objects next to the image.

The following image demonstrates a location page image with padding.

Zones now have properties in the Project Assist Property Inspector.

For example, you can set a zone color that is constant rather than data driven. This is useful when a zone is for navigation only. The following image shows the properties of a zone that has been given a constant color.

Also, you can set the background or border properties of a zone to be determined by metric status, instead of metric value. For example, the following image shows the properties of a zone with a border that displays status color.

You can also set the mouse-over opacity of a zone. The following image demonstrates a zone that has a higher opacity on mouse-over.

When you create a binding from your data, you can now choose a property of the target object to bind to. To bind to any property, you drag the binding source onto the Project Assist Property Inspector, as shown in the following image.

If an object has a default property, you can also drag and drop directly onto the object to bind to the default property. The following image shows how to bind to the default property of a damper tile.

Using conversion binding, you can cause property values to be determined by calculations, formatting, or mapping on source values.

For example, the following image demonstrates a conversion binding that formats a value.

The following image demonstrates an example of a conversion binding that maps a value. In this example, the zone is green if Occupancy is TRUE, and red if Occupancy is FALSE.

The following image demonstrates a conversion binding in which the minimum and maximum of a gauge have been configured as 20 degrees below and 20 degrees above the current temperature.

Now you can choose from a library of tiles representing terminal units and full devices, when you add equipment to your device template. The following image demonstrates how to add a device tile to a device template.

Now you can create zones on device templates. Previously, zones were available only on location pages. The following image demonstrates how to create a zone on a template.

When you create zones on location pages or device templates, you can redraw or move the zones. Before version 10, you could edit only one vertex at a time.

The Redraw command removes the selected zone and chooses the draw tool automatically. The zone that you immediately draw has the bindings of the removed zone. If you cancel the draw action, the removed zone reappears.

You can now move zones using the Move tool. This is useful when you copy and paste a zone or duplicate a zone. You can also press or hold an arrow key to move a zone by one pixel at a time, or hold Shift to move a zone by five pixels at a time.

The following animation demonstrates how to use the move tool when duplicating zones.

Now you can individually resize and position zones, callouts, equipment tiles, charts, and widgets, as shown in the following animation.

Resizing in this way does not change text size. Most widgets now have new text size properties as well.

You can also set object position and size using the new Position and Size properties in the Project Assist Property Inspector.

You can still scale objects as a group, by using the slider control.

You can export charts and gauges to CSV, by clicking the icon in the top right corner of the object.

This release introduces some new customization options for series in charts, gauges, and node lists. For example, the following options are new in this release:

• Choose chart series colors.
• Edit series labels.
• Reorder series.
• Delete any series.

The following image demonstrates how to reorder series.

In addition, historical charts now have the following new properties:

• Base at Zero—Moves the chart x-axis nearer to the Y minimum of the data rather than keeping it at zero.
• Rollup—Allows you to specify the type of value that is displayed for each interval.
• Interval—Allows you to select the length of time between data values.
• Delta—Instead of the value, plot the difference between each value and the next or previous one.

You can configure a legend to do a data action when clicked, as shown in the following image.

Now you can quickly add custom DGLux5 widgets in a simple five-step process. You can use custom symbols in both pages and device templates. You must use DGLux5 in order to create a custom symbol.

You can create bindings to custom symbols using the Project Assist Property Inspector. If you set a default property for the symbol, you can drag and drop directly on the object.

The following image demonstrates a custom symbol in DGLux5, in the PA2/palette/callouts.dg5 file.

The following image demonstrates how to find the same custom symbol in Project Assist and add it to a device template.

For custom widgets, all symbol parameters except dynamic and table data types now appear in Project Assist Property Inspectors.

The following image demonstrates the parameters for a custom symbol in DGLux5, in the PA2/palette/callouts.dg5 file.

The following image demonstrates creating a binding from the Temperature point to the contents widget property.

Projects can now be imported and exported. This facilitates updates of Project Assist, because you can export a project and then import it into a later build of Project Assist. You can also export and import a single aspect of the project, such as a device template or styles.

This release includes major and minor improvements across every aspect of Project Assist.

• Pressing the Backspace key does not send a Back command to the browser. This prevents accidental loss of changes.
• Attempting to refresh or close the browser window triggers a confirmation dialog instead of automatically refreshing. This prevents accidental loss of changes.

• You can sort selected Project Tree nodes in ascending or descending alphabetical order.

• The toolbar has been visually improved and can be moved.
• You can toggle Preview mode within the Page Editor and Template Editor, using a toolbar button.
• New Save and Reload toolbar buttons let you more easily save or discard current changes.
• When you edit a zone, vertex sizes are automatically optimized.
• Pages no longer require images.
• Now the Binding Tree can be open while you are using other tools, such as the Select tool or the Add Zones tool. To open and close the Binding Tree, toggle the Project Assist Binding Dialog button in the toolbar.
• To open and close the Project Assist Property Inspector, toggle the Properties button in the toolbar.

• Significant performance improvements and property additions have been made for all callouts, charts, gauges, and widgets.
• Charts now are smarter regarding reading the meta-information for series. For example, two boolean series with different strings, such as on/off and occ/unocc, will create different axes, but two boolean series with the same strings will use a single axis.

• Trigger schedules are supported.
• Reload and Save buttons let the user discard or save current changes.
• Filtering is possible in weekly trigger schedules.
• Weekly enum schedules can now handle enums from unknown module sources.

• All alarm classes can appear in the alarm console simultaneously.
• The alarm console can be filtered by alarm class.

Various fixes have been made throughout Project Assist.

The following terms have changed:

In addition, modules that apply to only one data source are now named based on that data source—for example, “Niagara Alarms.”

These known issues are unresolved as of the release date:

• Vertical and horizontal copper piping tiles do not stretch properly.
• Occasionally, small gaps appear between HVAC tiles in the deployed project, even when gaps do not appear during editing. To prevent this issue, position duct and pipe pieces so that they overlap slightly.
• A background image for a location page does not update immediately when replaced by a different image file with the same name. However, the image is updated the next time the browser is refreshed.
• The “lat” and “long” properties for location pages are not currently used by Project Assist. These properties are intended for a maps feature that is not yet implemented.