It is likely that you will want to use the same pens for multiple charts. To avoid the repetition of re-creating the pens each time, Proficy Portal allows you to save a set of pens as a pen group. A pen group is a pre-defined set of pens. Rather than selecting a data source for the chart and configuring pens for each source, you can simply add a pre-configured pen group. For example, suppose you create two pens; one pen shows the maximum value of the data and the other pen shows the minimum value. If you save these pens as a pen group, you can quickly compare any other data source against the maximum and minimum values.
Pen groups can be used with Time charts, Event charts, XY charts, and Correlation charts (SPC chart).
After you create a pen group, you can load it into any chart. This feature allows you to quickly change the pens applied to a chart. When you load a pen group into a chart in Configuration mode, any existing pens or pen groups will be replaced by the loaded pen group. However, the pens/pen groups are not permanently replaced until the display is saved.
Pen groups can also be loaded during run-time (if you have permission to do so). At run-time this can be a time saver, particularly if you need to refer to data from many different pens or the same pens at different times. For more information on loading pens during run-time, refer to Loading and Saving Pen Groups in Run-time.
The pen groups you create will change as your needs change. From the configuration environment, you can modify a pen group by loading it, re-configuring the pens, and saving the set of pens under their original pen group name.
Modifying pen groups from the run-time environment is accomplished the same way as in the configuration environment, however, it requires the chart to be modifiable. You can determine if a chart is modifiable by right-clicking in the chart's plotting area. If you see the Configure command in the context menu that appears, the chart is modifiable and you can modify its pen groups.
You may need to delete pen groups as they become obsolete. To delete a pen group, remove the file from the AllUsers/PenGroups directory on the Proficy Portal server.
Before you delete any file, be sure to copy it to another location to serve as a backup.
IMPORTANT: Deleting a pen group does not affect the charts using that pen group. After a pen group is loaded, the data is stored with the chart.
