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Property Ownership
Property Concepts
Property Ownership
Ownership is a key element in understanding the concept of property use. When
we say that certain kinds of objects "own" certain properties, we mean that those
properties can only be attached to those objects. Selectable items can own
properties, but certain classes of properties and certain classes of objects make
sense together, while others do not.
By way of analogy, you could assign a value to a property called "number of years
in school" for a person, and you could assign a value to another property called
"number of cylinders" for a car. Thus, you could say that people own the property
"number of years in school," and cars own the property "number of cylinders."
However, it does not make sense to provide a value to a property called "number
of cylinders" and assign that property to a person. People don't own the property
"number of cylinders;" that is, "number of cylinders" has no semantic meaning in
the context of people.
Here is another example. Pins own properties called Rise and Fall. You can
assign a value to the Rise property and attach that value to a specific pin in the
design. However, it would not make sense to attach that value to a net in the
design; nets would not understand the "Rise" property.
To help you keep track of application property ownership, Design Architect
provides "ownership" commands. These commands define property ownership,
and list the valid property owners for named properties. The Set Property Owner
command lets you restrict property ownership to a specific type of object. The
Report Default Property Settings command lets you check the "ownership status"
of properties, that is, to tell you which objects own which properties by default.
The owners for a particular type of property can be changed. This does not affect
previously-created objects with that property.
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Design Architect User’s Manual, V8.5_2