By default, all states defined on an object are considered to be mutually-exclusive—that is, eXpress assumes that no more than one of the states defined on each object can be enabled within the same test or design state definition. The Analyst can override this default, specifying that more than one of an object's states can be simultaneously active, by disabling the "States are Mutually Exclusive" checkbox on the States panel.

 

Note: When mutually-exclusive states are disabled for multiple objects, the Auto-Create Design States operation will often create a significantly greater number of design states (since there are many more possible combinations of object state settings).

 

 

 

When the Analyst enables mutually-exclusive states on an object and there exists at least one test or design state definition with multiple states of that object enabled, then those definitions will automatically be updated so that only one state is enabled for the specified object. Because this could result in superfluous, redundant or inaccurate test or design state definitions, the following warning will first appear:

 

Note: If the design contains a large number of design state or test definitions, then the software may take a significant amount of time updating these definitions. In some situations, it may be more expedient to delete the design states and/or test definitions, set the states to mutually-exclusive, and then re-create the definitions.

 

See also: Allowing No State Selections.