When you change the name of certain elements in an eXpress model, the change often triggers a variety of other updates—from changing the name in the Explorer tree to the re-propagation of net functions. When you are working in a small or medium-sized model, it is good that all this happens automatically; for larger models, however, these updates may take several seconds.\
You don’t want eXpress to perform these updates for each keystroke when you are typing an element’s name…and sometimes you’ll want to perform several name changes at once and postpone the “triggered” updates until you are done. To support these different scenarios, eXpress now provides three different update modes.
Two of these modes can be selected on the General Options dialog (depicted at right).
The first update mode performs these updates “as you type”. In other words, with each character that you type, the model and Analyst interface are updated to reflect the change in text. This is the default setting and it is the best approach for most models, since it allows you to instantly see the impact of your edits.
When the second mode is selected, updates are performed “when you leave the field”. So, for instance, if you are changing the name of an object in the abbreviation field on the object Details panel, other updates will not be triggered until you click away from that field. This mode is useful when the design is large enough that it takes a second or more to perform updates with each change to the name of a given design element.Like other changes made on the General Options dialog, these settings are stored in the Windows Registry, so they will persist until they are disabled again using this dialog.
There are four exceptions to these first two update modes:
Ports – Because changes to port names often result in functional propagation, design updates for changes to port abbreviations are always performed “when you leave the field” (regardless of the setting on the General Options panel)
Design States – When a design contains 1000 or more design states, changes to design state names will be performed “when you leave the field”. When there are fewer than 1000 design states, updates will follow the setting on the General Options panel.
Fault Templates – When a design contains 1000 or more fault templates, changes to design state names will be performed “when you leave the field”. When there are fewer than 1000 fault templates, updates will follow the setting on the General Options panel.
Failure Modes, Failure Effects and Object States – Because there is no Details panel for these element types, the setting on the General Options panel does not apply.
The third update mode is a temporary mode that is initiated by simultaneously holding down the Ctrl and Shift keys on the keyboard and then pressing the F5 key. The following message will then appear:
When this update mode is enabled, eXpress will postpone triggering name- related updates until you disable the mode (using the same key combination), press the F5 key to manually trigger the postponed updates, or save the design.
When name-related updates are postponed, updates will be deferred not only for changes made on the Details panel, but also to edits made using the quick-naming feature (where you hover the mouse pointer over an object or port and then type the abbreviation) and secondary updates that result from apply the Auto-Connect operation or renaming nets using the Net Assistant. Updates will continue to be suspended until you either disable the mode or exit eXpress (unlike the first two modes, the temporary suspension of updates will be disabled when you exit the software).
