“Production line” Status Indicators - Dynamic BloX Widget
Introduction
This article explains how to set up and use an example Blox widget that creates a dynamic visual representation of a "production line".
This widget was developed for a manufacturing use case but can be adapted to any use case that needs a dynamic linear block representation.
Each line name, status, and component is controlled by the underlying data.
Example installation
- Extract the attached Zip file.
- Import data model – “Dynamic prod line.sdata”.
- Import dashboard – “Dynamic prod line.dash”.
- Extract “ExtraFiles.zip” to “/branding/blox-stuff” on the environment.
This path can be updated in the widget editor (search for all occurrences). - To change the structure and statuses of the lines and line components, update the “LineData.xlsx” file and re-import to the data model.
Widget structure
Data setup
The widget is controlled by 2 tables, Lines and Line_status (attached the data later and raw data xls). The tables are connected by the “production_line” field which is the line name and ID.
"lines" table
Defines the production lines in the system.
Each line’s component visibility is defined in this table: 0=hidden; 1=visible.
"line_status" table
Defines the status of each component: 0=working; 1=warning; 11=stopped.
Blox widget setup
For each production line defined in the data, a widget iteration will appear.
The line name and enabled components will be shown and used on the individual line’s components statuses, the main line status is calculated and displayed accordingly.
Blox panel setup
Extra files
Extra files (icons, CSS, background image) are required by the widget. These files (attached in zip file) should be uploaded into the environment file system, the default path is “/branding/blox-stuff/”.
Conclusion
Using this example, you can see how blox can be used to visualize the status of entities using dynamic data.
