Aliases simplify the process of binding symbols to objects during graphic generation when a site has several graphics that contain a common set of objects. The Alias feature allows you to use a wildcard character (*) to represent a single string of characters that may be part of the complete object reference as part of the binding information for a symbol. When a graphic is displayed in View Mode, the alias symbol (*) is replaced with the text from the alias box of the symbol you used to access the graphic. If you navigate to a graphic using an aliased button, you cannot edit the graphic. To edit the aliased graphic, access it through the navigation tree.
For example, aliasing allows you to use a single aliased graphic for multiple field controllers, such as VMAs, with similar configurations. See Creating Aliases.
Alias Example - Main and Aliased Graphics shows an example of a main graphic and an aliased graphic. In the figure, the top panel contains the main graphic, which has several buttons bound to the aliased graphic. Each button has its alias string set to the reference for a different field device. The bottom panel shows the aliased graphic, displayed directly from the navigation view (that is, with no alias strings passed in).
Alias Example - Using the Aliases show the aliased graphic as it displays when the user clicks the corresponding buttons in the main graphic (that is, with field device-specific values).
For more information on binding graphics, see Binding Symbols to Objects in Edit Mode.