Using Diagram Sectors

Sectors enable you to visually describe sub-system separation and specification onto a diagram. It also enables the system to automatically propagate specific attributes like function and location, as well as properties seamlessly throughout all hierarchical levels and onto child sectors and objects.

To enable the sectors functionality set the “Enable Sectors, Locations and Functions” system preference, see System Preferences for Project in the “System Preferences Dialog Box” (Capital Project Manager User Guide).

Sectors enable you to compartmentalize your diagram. A project contain designs. These designs can contain a number of diagrams on which you can specify a myriad of objects, devices, and their connectivity. The Add Sector functionality enables you to separate objects on the diagram into discrete sectors, as shown in Figure 18.

Figure 18: Sub-System Separation and Specification

Initially when created, a sector inherits its location and function attributes from its parent diagram, which, in turn, will have inherited them from its design. In Figure 18, the design has been ascribed the Location and Function of 1. The diagram, inherits this, and using a “.” operator, can be further appended with a 2 to show its place in the hierarchy. This hierarchy delineation continues down through the sub-systems, with parent sectors, child sectors, and objects all inheriting their values from their respective parents, while embellishing upon them using the "." operator.

You can right-click sectors and objects and select Properties to explicitly change these attributes. You can also add additional properties onto Sectors using the Properties Dialog Box functionality.

Sectors also enable the automation of naming, styling, and rules and constraints, for quicker device specification and control of look and feel, as well as behavior.

Nested sectors are permitted - you can create a sub-sector within a larger sector. Objects within a sub-sector inherit values from their parent sector which may, in turn, have inherited values from its parent (the object’s “grandparent”) sector.

Change management is handled seamlessly. If higher level location and function attributes are amended, these changes are automatically propagated to the lower levels.

If you move an object from one sector to another it will automatically update to inherit its location and function attributes from its new sector. Additionally, if you drag and extend a sector to cover an object or sector, or move a sector to cover another sector entirely, these will automatically inherit the attributes and properties of the covering sector. Dragging an object into free space makes the object follow the next immediate parent which is now the diagram.

Design rule checks ensure the validity of sectors and their related objects. See Design Rule Checks Applicable to Capital Logic Designer Designs.

Tip

You can style individual sectors, using queries, to only display relative function and location values (attributed value minus its parent’s), with respect to their parent using the RelativeFunction and RelativeLocation attributes. See the Capital Diagram Styling User Guide for more information about all aspects of Capital styling.

Rules on Inheritance

If you have assigned location and function attributes to a design, propagation of these attributes to the object will take place even if the system preference for sector, location, and function is deactivated.

A function/location attribute on an object or sector is considered as inheriting if it has prefix matching with the function/location attribute of parent, as shown in the following example (using the function attribute F1).

Parent	Child	Inherited Value
F1	F1	Yes
F1	F1.F2	Yes
	F1	No
F1		No
F1.F2	F1	No
F1	F2	No

An object inherits Function/Location attributes as follows:

• The object must be the Home object

• The attribute on the object or sector should be inherited from parent as noted in Table 12.

• Upon completing the action, the object or sector will replace the old parent attribute values with the new parent value. Owned value will be retained.

• Special case: If an object does not have an attribute assigned, it inherits from its new parent.

A parent can be a sector, a diagram or a design.

Rules for Updating Properties From

a Parent Sector

Properties are always updated or removed depending on the new parent property. This is true even if the property is manually edited.

Old Parent Property	Child Property	New Parent Property	Result After Action
P1=V1	P1=V1	P1=V3	P1=V3
P1=V1	P1=V2	P1=V3	P1=V3
P1=V1	Not present	P1=V3	P1=V3
P1=V1	P1=***	Not present	Removed

There are some exceptions to this rule. Properties will not be updated or deleted in the case of the following conditions:

• Property is not editable (for example: property coming from a part or symbol)

• Property is derived from Object Type Information (OTI) and the new value is not valid as specified in the OTI

Considerations Regarding Design-Wide

Objects in Different Sectors

Behavior for Attributes

The home object is decided by a match between the function and location value of the object and sector. For example:

• Sector 1: F1, L1 Device71_Instance1: F1, L1

• Sector 2: F2, L2 Device71_Instance2: F1, L1

Figure 19: Behavior for Attributes

In this case any object with F1, L1 inside a sector with F1, L1 is considered the home object and moving it will change the function, location value for all instances.

Behavior for Properties

Properties can be derived from any sector which a Design Wide Object is part of. In the following example Val1 and Val2 are two properties, one on each sector as shown in Figure 20. Moving the second instance into the other sector also derives the property Val2 from that sector, (Figure 21).

Figure 20: Behavior for Properties (before)

Figure 21: Behavior for Properties (after)

Properties for device-side connectors and backshells are inherited from the sector depending on their position, rather than the value on parent device/connector.

Inconsistent property information can exist between a device and device-side connector, for example, if a device is placed in two sectors it will have properties from both, but if a device-side connector is present on only one of the device instances, it will derive properties from only one sector.

Rules

for Capital Schematic Generator for Systems Integrator and Capital Schematic Generator for Logic Designer Generation

• If the connectivity objects has location and function values, the values will not be modified based on the diagram.

• If the connectivity object has a null value on both function and location, it will inherit the attributes from its immediate parent

Auto

View - Generate Wiring Diagram

• Location and Function Attributes on generated connectivity and diagrams will have the same as values as on the associated source Capital Logic Designer design with Capital Systems Integrator design

• Location and Function Attributes on a design will be retained from the dialog box.

• Generated Connectors will inherit values of location and function from the diagrams in which they are placed.

• Attributes on source device objects are converted to properties on generated object.

Auto

View - Query and Auto Generate

• In the case of prototype based distribution for the newly created diagrams, the Edit diagram dialog box displays the values of location and function corresponding to the prototype diagram.

• Existing values of Location and Function are retained for the connectivity objects.

• If the value does not exist, it is inherited from the parent diagram.

Auto

View - Generate Diagrams

• In the scenario where a home instance is removed from the diagram, the location and function are evaluated on the anchor object within the design.

Parent Topic:

Diagram Sectors

Capital Logic Designer User Guide, 2512

Unpublished work. © 2025 Siemens