Inserting an alignment panel object

The Alignment Panel object is an invisible reference object that you can use to group and position child objects relative to a single point.

About this task

When the single reference point of the alignment panel changes, the position of all the child objects assigned to the alignment panel changes as well. An alignment panel is most useful when you want a single data point in a layout object to be represented by several objects. For example, a scatter chart usually uses a single marker object for each data point that it displays. Using an alignment panel you could specify that for each data point in a scatter chart a marker, a text label, and two buttons will be displayed in the chart. Whenever your data point value changes and is displayed in a new location, all the objects in the alignment panel are displayed in the new location as well.

To create an alignment panel and use it in your visual project:

Procedure

  1. In the editor window, select the visual report page or visual dashboard scene to which you want to add the object. If the page or scene is not open in the editor, then double-click the page or scene in the Project Explorer.
  2. In the Project Explorer, select the element from the visual project to which you want to add an alignment panel.
  3. From the Palette view, select the Alignment Panel object and insert it in the editor window. The Alignment Panel object is not drawn on the canvas in the editor window. It is added as a node in the Project Explorer view.
  4. On the current canvas that is in the editor window, add the graphical objects that you want to be grouped together in the alignment panel. Each object is drawn on the canvas and inserted as a node in the Project Explorer view.
  5. When you have finished adding each object, select the object name in the Project Explorer, and drag the object dropping it in the Alignment Panel node. Repeat this for each object that you want to be in the alignment panel. Upon completion, when you click any of the objects in the alignment panel, a box will surround the objects.
  6. With the alignment panel selected in the Project Explorer view, select the Location cell in Properties view. Enter a value or column name. The center of the grouped objects will move to the coordinates that you specify.

Results

Note:
  • In a layout object, the Location property of the Alignment Panel object takes different values, depending on the type of layout object that you are designing. For example, in a scatter chart, the data points are x- and y-coordinates based on columns from your query. To set the location of the alignment panel in a scatter chart, you specify the column names for the x- and y-coordinates. To determine what you should set the Location property for an alignment panel to, look at the Location property of the default data symbol for that layout object.

  • If the alignment panel has a single value for its Location property, you can replace it with a single column from your query. If it has more than one value for its Location property, make sure that you replace each value with the appropriate column from your query, and that you retain the correct formatting for the Location property.
  • For charts with axes that supply an alignment panel by default, the Location property for the alignment panel is set to the Pt() function which references one or more column names.