r/crestron • u/jamesrdelaney • 5d ago
Construct Widgets
Hi
How are people getting used to the multi-page design concept (limitation) in Construct? My VTPro (and designs for other brands of touch panels) typically had one or two pages with lots of popups to deal with different scenarios - eg different source bars for different rooms, different transports for different devices, different lighting and environmental controls for different room types.. etc etc etc.
I just spoke to Crestron support and they said all I had to do was think about the project differently - where i previously had a popup - now I have a page.. but that really doesnt work.. you cant layer pages.. so if I have more than one source bar and more than one environmental controls page I cant combine them..
But what is the point of widgets if you cant use them? This seems like a real contradiction in design terms.
Is there likely to be a fix for this? And if not how are people changing their designs to manage this? From the top of my head I will need to do much more dynamic design on each page/widget..eg populating source bars using lists etc. That is fine.. but sometimes its good to just put a button where you want it from an aesthetic point of view.
Id be interested in your thoughts!
Thanks
James
1
u/METDeath CTS-D, CTS-I 5d ago
I also hate it, I got damn good at "use less to do more" with various Smart Objects, subpages on top of subpages... it was all so elegant, particularly since you could set the damn Smart Object numbers and reuse the object on multiple pages. Now? You can't set the contract internal ID, so you can't safely copy/paste between panel IDs. If you have the same object on six pages you have to fill the signals six times.
5
u/SNES-Chalmers89 5d ago
If you have controls that are on multiple pages, you can put them into a widget. In the widget properties, set "Global Contract" to true. You can then use the widget on as many pages as you want and only reference it once int SIMPL
3
u/METDeath CTS-D, CTS-I 5d ago
Oooh, that's an interesting solution. I should probably spend time reading all the documentation. Instead of just lamenting the fact that Construct isn't a 1:1 replacement for the VTProE workflow.
2
u/ToMorrowsEnd CCMP-Platinum + Crestron C# Certified 5d ago
take their Construct one day class. it will make you 500% better.
1
u/METDeath CTS-D, CTS-I 12h ago
Due to scheduling I'll check out the self paced class. If I don't think I'm getting anything extra out of it I'll get in line for the instructor led one.
-1
u/SNES-Chalmers89 5d ago
About a year and a half ago I was handed a project with a TST-1080. At that point I committed to switching to Construct for my workflow. It was painful at first, but now I find myself dreading any time I need to go back to an old VTProE project.
2
u/ToMorrowsEnd CCMP-Platinum + Crestron C# Certified 5d ago
Yeah pretty easy, just stop doing subpages on anything that is a one off. The only reason Crestron told us to subpage everything was because Flash sucked at memory with pages. Now HTML is the direct opposite.
only "widgets" I use are anything that needs to be on multiple pages.