Step Table Editor: Overview

Event Steps Explained

The Event Step table contains 256 Event Steps. For details on the use of Steps, refer to Event Control Overview. For a summary of keyboard shortcuts in this editor, see Step Table Editor: Keyboard Shortcuts.

Changing the Event Step Table

Changes are made to the Event Step table using the Event Step Editor. Refer to Table Editor Basics for topics common to all table editors. The default extension for saved Event Step tables is .st1. Features specific to the Event Step table editor are described below.

Printing the Event Step Table

You can print the current event step table, including its comments.

To set the margins:

On the File menu, click Print Setup.
Under Margins, enter the sizes of the margins in the four text boxes. These settings are in inches.
Click OK.

To select landscape or portrait modes:

On the File menu, click Print Setup.
Click Printer Setup.
Under Orientation, click either Portrait or Landscape.
Click OK in the Print Setup dialog box.
Click OK in the Print Options dialog box.

To print the table:

On the File menu, click Print. You can also press CTRL+P or click the print icon on the toolbar.
Select the printer and number of copies to print.
Click OK.

Jumping to an Event Step

Because the Event Step table has many columns, you may want to go to a specific Event Step. There are two ways of doing this:

On the Edit menu, click Goto Next Step in Sequence or press CTRL+F. This will move the cursor to the step referred to by the current step's Link Next field.
On the Edit menu, click Go to Event Step or press CTRL+G. This is a more general method, which prompts you to type the step number to which you want to go.

Deleting Columns

If you wish to delete a column or columns, follow these steps:

Click on the step number that is located at the top of each table column. This will highlight all fields in the step.
If you wish to select a range of steps, hold down the SHIFT key and click on the step number and the other end of the range. Now all steps between and including the two selected steps will be highlighted.
On the Edit menu, click Delete Column x to Clipboard.

Notice that the cells that were deleted are stored in the clipboard.

Inserting Columns

You can insert columns into the Event Step table in two ways:

To insert an empty column:

Select a field in the step that you want the step to be inserted in front of.
On the Edit menu, click Insert Empty Column.

To insert the columns in the clipboard from a delete or copy command:

Select a field in the step that you want the steps to be inserted in front of.
On the Edit menu, click Insert x Columns from Clipboard.

Automatically Updating Links

Whenever event steps are shifted left or right as described above under Deleting Columns and Inserting Columns, there is the potential of links to the shifted steps becoming broken. RMCWin is capable of adjusting links to steps that move using one of the above methods. This feature is enabled by default.

To toggle this feature on and off:

On the Settings menu, click Adjust Links on Column Operations.

Note: The links affected by this option include those by the Link Next field, the Command Value of Start Event (E) and Teach Step (t) commands. Links from the Input to Event table can be checked as described under Maintaining Input to Event Table Links below.

Reporting Orphaned Links

Steps are deleted when the Delete Columns to Clipboard command described above is used. Also when steps are inserted into the Event Step table, the steps at the top are lost. For example, if five steps are inserted before step 10, then steps 10 to 255 are all shifted right. However, because there can only be 255 steps in the table, steps 251 to 255 are shifted off the end and lost.

Care must be taken to ensure that these lost steps weren’t used. Therefore, the Event Step editor can automatically report when links to deleted steps are broken (orphaned). This feature is enabled by default.

To toggled this feature on and off, do the following:

On the Settings menu, click Report Orphaned Links.

Maintaining Input to Event Table Links

Whenever event steps are shifted left or right as described above under Deleting Columns and Inserting Columns, there is the potential of entries in the Input to Event table to become broken. When the Maintain Input to Event Links option is enabled, the currently open Input to Event table will be checked to see if any events pointed to by the Input to Event table have moved or been deleted. If the Input to Event table editor is not open, it will temporarily be opened and load the table from the module or from the default file if no module is connected. This newly-loaded table will be checked.

To toggle this feature on and off, do the following:

On the Settings menu, click Maintain Input to Event Links.

Adding Comments

The Event Steps editor offers the ability to enter a comment for each event step. These comments are then saved and restored with the step file. When a step has a comment associated with it, a comment icon ( $image\NOTE.gif$ ) appears on the heading for the step. Comments are copied or moved with the step when all fields in a step are copied or moved —whether by clipboard commands such as cut, copy, and paste, or by inserting or deleting steps.

The Comment Editor is used to add, edit, and remove comments. Use one of the following methods to start the Comment Editor while in the Event Steps editor:

On the Edit menu, click Edit Comment.
Press CTRL+N.
Double-click the heading of a step.

Using any of the above methods when the Comment Editor is already open will move the keyboard focus to the Comment Editor.

The Comment Editor will stay up until explicitly closed; you can freely switch between editing steps and their comments. The Comment Editor will display the comment for the step currently selected in the Event Steps editor. Changes made to comments take place immediately; therefore, you do not need to close the Comment Editor or move to another step to finalize changes before saving the file.

Note: The comments cannot be saved in the RMC, even if parameters are saved to Flash. The comments are only saved in the Event Step file (.st1). Make sure the Event Step file is saved in an accessible location for viewing the comments.

The Comment Editor responds to the following commands:

Click Restore or press ALT+R to reset the comment for the current step back to its state when this step was first selected. This can also be interpreted as an undo.
Click Clear or press ALT+C to erase the entire comment for the current step.
Press CTRL+F or CTRL+G to jump to another step in the event step table without changing the keyboard focus back to the main window. See the Jumping to an Event Step section above for details on the differences of these commands.
Press CTRL+N to switch keyboard focus back to the Event Steps editor.
Click the Close button or press ALT+F4 to close the comment editor.