About composites

Currently, a composite is something that Workbench allows you do to virtually any component in a station, notably control points and objects, and even folders that contain control logic. When you make a composite, you expose slots of child components in the glyph (object shape) of that parent (composited) component. This can simplify linking and promote reuse of control logic.

CAUTION: Composites have associated issues. For now, you should avoid making folder composites in your control logic, and instead use the composite feature only at the point/object level to expose extension slots (if necessary).

When you composite a component (say a control point, meaning its contents), you select specific slots in child components (say, properties and/or actions of its extensions) to be exposed in the shape of that point. Then, when looking at that point in the wire sheet view of its parent folder, you can see exposed properties of children as linkable slots (and/or available actions).

Note: If you are familiar with Niagara r2, the composite concept is similar to Bundle or Composite objects, only more flexible—you can expose slots in containers many levels down, for example. However, please see the Caution above.

Some composite examples

A few simple examples of composites are as follows:

  • Point-level composite

  • Folder-level composite