The only workaround I have found, is to create a variety of HMI tags and use the settag event command to populate each of them and then pass those tags to the dynamic properties, but that seems like a very sloppy way to have to do this.

So basically, is there a way for a Faceplate VB script to read the contents of a fixed value property? or is there a way to create a property that will accept either a static value or a dynamic tag (I'm pretty sure the later is not possible, but I thought I'd ask the experts).

Please help. Thanks!

For example, I would like to create a faceplate property that accepts a static integer, and then use a faceplate script to read that value and based on some evaluation, set a variety of faceplate hmi bool tags for the purpose of making those items of the faceplace visible or not.

it seems as though there is no way for a faceplate script to access any static value (it can only read dynamic tag values via the smartTag() functon, and all static values are off limits. why?!). It seems silly to have to create tags and populate them with values just to send parameters to a faceplate.

This is just one type of example, but I might want to use a string instead: ex:

if smarttags("properties\static_string") = "wed" then

smartTags("item2_vis") = True

smartTags("item4_vis") = False

smartTags("Item24_vis") = True

...

End If

But in this example, assuming x is a static value string, SmartTags() can't access it. The only way around it that I can see it to pass the faceplate tags that are pre-populated with their values. That works, but is not a robust solution.

The whole purpose of this it to make faceplace much more generic and alow the screen designer to create a more generic faceplate that can be locked down to a particular function at design time without having to create numerous (but extremetly similar) faceplates to do the same thing.