About the Nav file

The Nav file is a special XML file that resides on the file system–not in the station database. It provides navigation in a hierarchical tree structure.

You can create as many Nav files as you want, however, a client may display only one Nav file at any time. This means that any time you are viewing a station you can only see one nav file in the Nav tree (or locator bar) but since a station may be serving many clients, each client may be using different nav files concurrently – based on their nav file assignment. The Nav file is user-specific, so when a user logs into a station, the Nav file for that user is displayed in the Nav tree or locator bar.

You can match a Nav file to a user by using the Workbench User Manager view. Refer to the section on “UserService” in the NiagaraAX User Guide for details about the User Manager.

You can create new nav files using the right-click menu, as shown below.. For more details, see Creating new nav files.

Add details to your nav file and customize the hierarchy of your Nav tree using the Nav File Editor, as described in About the Nav File Editor.



Figure 73.   Creating a new Nav file

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The figure below shows three Nav files in the nav folder. Notice that the Nav side bar displays a tree hierarchy of links directly under the station node. Each node of the tree has a context-appropriate icon to help the user recognize the target link of each node in the tree. You can specify icons for the tree nodes, as described in About the Nav File Editor.



Figure 74.   Nav file sidebar

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