Variable Management

Overview

The Variables panel is the central view onto the FAddressPool — the single source of truth for every variable in a ForgeIEC project. Each variable exists exactly once in the pool, keyed by its IEC address (%IX0.0, %QW3, …). Containers such as GVL, AnvilVarList, HmiVarList or POU interfaces are only views onto this pool — no variable lives in two stores in parallel.

FAddressPool  (single source of truth)
   |
   +-- FAddressPoolModel  (Qt table)
         |
         +-- FVariablesPanel  (filters + bulk ops + clipboard)
               |
               +-- Tree filter sets FilterMode + tag

The panel docks at the bottom of the main window and mirrors every change immediately into every other view (POU editor, ST compiler, PLCopen-XML save).

Columns

The table has 15 columns; each can be toggled individually via the header context menu — every POU editor instance stores its column visibility independently.

Filter modes

The panel does not show the entire pool at once — the project tree on the left picks which slice is visible. Clicking a tree node makes the main window set FilterMode plus tag:

Filter axes (composable)

Above the table sit four further axes that all act in parallel on top of the tree filter:

• Free-text search over name, address and tags — to finds T_Off.
• IEC type filter as a combo (all / BOOL / INT / REAL / …).
• Address-range filter: all / %I (inputs) / %Q (outputs) / %M (markers); within %M further by word size (%MX / %MW / %MD / %ML).
• TaggedOnly toggle — hides every pool entry without any container tag (useful to find an “orphaned” pool).

Every filter is AND-combined: anything that does not match all active axes is hidden.

Multi-select + bulk operations

As in any Qt table: Shift-click and Ctrl-click select ranges or individual rows. The context menu on the selection offers:

• Set Anvil Group… — sets anvilGroup on every selected variable.
• Set HMI Group… — same for hmiGroup.
• Set GVL Namespace… — same for gvlNamespace.
• Clear Tag — strips the tag of the active filter mode.
• Toggle Monitor / HMI / Force — bulk toggle of the safety switches.

Every bulk edit goes through FAddressPoolModel::applyToRows, results in a single dataChanged signal, and is undoable as one undo step.

Clipboard (copy / cut / paste)

Selected variables can be copied — with all tags and flags — and pasted into another view. The payload uses two formats:

• Custom MIME (application/x-forgeiec-vars+json) as the roundtrip vehicle carrying full pool information.
• TSV plain text as a fallback for Excel / text editors.

On paste the panel automatically retargets the container tags onto the active filter mode: copy from FilterByAnvil (group Pfirsich) and paste into FilterByHmi (group Stachelbeere) and the variables drop their anvilGroup and pick up hmiGroup = Stachelbeere. Conflicting addresses and names are deduplicated (T_1 → T_1_1).

Drag/drop into HmiVarList

Variables can be dragged from the main panel into a HmiVarList POU. The editor then automatically sets the variable’s HMI export flag and writes the HMI group as a tag — the Bellows export is now armed.

Per-variable safety switches

Three per-variable switches, each requiring an explicit opt-in:

• HMI — allows Bellows to read/write the variable.
• Monitor — allows live observation in online mode.
• Force — allows forcing a runtime value.

These flags are separate from the hmiGroup tag. The tag describes group membership; the flag activates the effect. Before each codegen the ST compiler verifies that every Bellows or Force access targets a variable whose flag is set — otherwise it raises a compile error.

Related topics

• Add a variable — the FAddVariableDialog with range patterns and the array wrapper.
• Project file format — how the pool is persisted as an <addData> block in PLCopen XML.
• Library — how function blocks see their instances in the pool.