HUMAN-MACHINE INTERFACE (HMI) SYSTEM HAVING ELEMENTS STYLES WITH CENTRALLY MANAGED AND DISTRIBUTED GRAPHIC STYLES

1 . A system for managing human machine interface (HMI) applications for industrial control and automation, said system comprising:

a processor;

software instructions stored on a tangible, non-transitory media and executable by the processor, said instructions comprising:

instructions for receiving data indicative of a manufacturing/process control system being monitored;

instructions for displaying a user interface indicative of a status of the manufacturing/process control system being monitored, said status is based on the received data;

instructions for defining a set of user-defined graphical element style standards, granularly applicable to separate elements; and

instructions responsive to user input for configuring a plurality of separate elements to be referenced to a particular graphical object representing a process control device of the manufacturing/process control system being monitored wherein the plurality of separate elements have the same user-defined graphical element style standards and wherein properties of the plurality of separate elements are defined by the particular graphical object so that the user configures the plurality of separate elements without accessing each of the plurality of separate elements.

2 . The system of claim 1 further comprising instructions responsive to user input for modifying an element style of the particular graphical object and instructions for changing the element style of the plurality of separate elements to have the same user-defined graphical element style standards as the modified element style of the particular graphical object.

3 . The system of claim 2 wherein changes by a user of the properties of the element style are automatically propagated to all runtime nodes so that the user does not have to redeploy the applications.

4 . The system of claim 1 further comprising instructions for providing predefined styles which are available to the user for building a custom element style.

5 . The system of claim 1 wherein the instructions for configuring permits the user to codify a graphic element style standard for color, line thickness, font, font color, and line style for the plurality of separate elements.

6 . The system of claim 1 wherein objects are groups into galaxies and further comprising instructions for exporting a user-selected element style of objects in a first galaxy and importing the user-selected element style into a second galaxy using an XML format and validating the imported XML file to ensure the imported XML file contains a compatible format with the second galaxy.

7 . The system of claim 1 wherein a plurality of referenced graphic have different element styles, and the different element styles have an order of precedence such that new styles can build upon the existing styles without cascading styles, so that the styles have defaults and allow building on styles wherein upper level style changes are not pushed down to explicitly set styles at the lower level whereas default aspects of style changes are push downs in the absence of changes by a user of such default aspects.

8 . Software instructions stored on a tangible, non-transitory media and executable by a processor, said instructions comprising:

instructions for receiving data indicative of a manufacturing/process control system being monitored;

instructions for displaying a user interface indicative of a status of the manufacturing/process control system being monitored, said status is based on the received data;

instructions for defining a set of user-defined graphical element style standards, granularly applicable to separate elements; and

instructions responsive to user input for configuring a plurality of separate elements to be referenced to a particular graphical object representing a process control device of the manufacturing/process control system being monitored wherein the plurality of separate elements have the same user-defined graphical element style standards and wherein properties of the plurality of separate elements are defined by the particular graphical object so that the user configures the plurality of separate elements without accessing each of the plurality of separate elements.

9 . The media of claim 8 further comprising instructions responsive to user input for modifying an element style of the particular graphical object and instructions for changing the element style of the plurality of separate elements to have the same user-defined graphical element style standards as the modified element style of the particular graphical object.

10 . The media of claim 9 wherein changes by a user of the properties of the element style are automatically propagated to all runtime nodes so that the user does not have to redeploy the applications.

11 . The media of claim 8 further comprising instructions for providing predefined styles which are available to the user for building a custom element style.

12 . The media of claim 8 wherein the instructions for configuring permits the user to codify a graphic element style standard for color, line thickness, font, font color, and line style for the plurality of separate elements.

13 . The media of claim 8 wherein objects are groups into galaxies and further comprising instructions for exporting a user-selected element style of objects in a first galaxy and importing the user-selected element style into a second galaxy using an XML format and validating the imported XML file to ensure the imported XML file contains a compatible format with the second galaxy.

14 . The media of claim 8 wherein a plurality of referenced graphic have different element styles, and the different element styles have an order of precedence such that new styles can build upon the existing styles without cascading styles, so that the styles have defaults and allow building on styles wherein upper level style changes are not pushed down to explicitly set styles at the lower level whereas default aspects of style changes are push downs in the absence of changes by a user of such default aspects.

15 . A processor executable method for managing human machine interface (HMI) applications for industrial control and automation, said method comprising:

receiving data indicative of a manufacturing/process control system being monitored;

displaying a user interface indicative of a status of the manufacturing/process control system being monitored, said status is based on the received data;

defining a set of user-defined graphical element style standards, granularly applicable to separate elements; and

responsive to user input, configuring a plurality of separate elements to be referenced to a particular graphical object representing a process control device of the manufacturing/process control system being monitored wherein the plurality of separate elements have the same user-defined graphical element style standards and wherein properties of the plurality of separate elements are defined by the particular graphical object so that the user configures the plurality of separate elements without accessing each of the plurality of separate elements.