Content-related Terminology
Primary Class
ECClass we requested content for.
Primary Instance
ECInstance we requested content for.
Select Class
ECClass we're selecting data from.
Select Instances
ECInstances that we get when selecting from select classes.
Related Instance
ECInstance that is related to select instance.
Related Properties
Properties that belong to a related instance rather than select instance.
Property Merging
When content is requested for multiple different classes and they all have similar properties, multiple properties may get merged under one field.
Example: requesting content for Window and Door classes which both have property Height - content will contain only one field with name Height and values of both Window and Door instances will be put under that field.
Properties are considered similar if:
- Names are equal
- Types are equal
- Editors are equal
- For related properties only: related to the same property
Value Merging
When content is requested with ContentFlags.MergeResults flag and contains more than 1 result row, its values are merged into 1 record. This is generally used only for property pane use case where we may request content for multiple selected elements.
Example of merged values:
Row | Field 1 | Field 2 | Field 1 |
---|---|---|---|
row 1 | has value | has value | - |
row 2 | has value | - | has value |
Result | has value | ***Varies*** | ***Varies*** |
The above example would render into a similar property grid:
Field | Value |
---|---|
Field 1 | has value |
Field 2 | ***Varies*** |
Field 3 | ***Varies*** |
Nested Content
In most cases property values are primitive, arrays or structs. However, it is possible to set up related properties using one-to-many or many-to-many relationship which creates, what we call, nested content.
Example:
Model
/ | \
/ | \
/ | \
Element1 Element2 Element3
In the above example Model has 3 related Element instances. We can request content for Model and ask to additionally show related Element properties. In this case element properties are be called nested content because properties of multiple Element instances are displayed as a single Model property. The property is created as an array of structs where each struct is created from Element instance.
Last Updated: 21 May, 2020