About property pages and wizard pages

Property pages display the property values of an object when it is selected in one of the Meridian client applications. Meridian provides some built-in property pages and supports custom, user-configurable property pages.

Meridian Enterprise provides the following standard property pages, which cannot be modified:

• Document – The default page for documents that shows basic system properties and a thumbnail image of the document.
• Rendition – Shows the properties in the BCRenditionPropertySet property set.
• Retention – Shows the properties in the AMRetentionControlPropertySet property set.
• Title Blocks – Shows the values of title block attributes when multiple layouts exist in a drawing.
• Folder – The default property page for every folder in the Folders view.

Wizard pages are property pages that are shown when new objects are created. Wizard pages can be used to prompt users to type property values for the object that they are creating, such as required properties that are used to calculate the object’s name or folder location. A property page can also be used as a wizard page so that you do not have to create the same page layout for both purposes.

Meridian property pages and wizard pages are similar to the forms used by other database management systems. In many other systems, form layout can be a tedious process of sizing and moving form fields manually. Meridian Enterprise Configurator makes property page layout easy by automatically arranging form fields and labels for you in columns and rows. Configurator takes care of automatically aligning and spacing items horizontally and vertically. You have much control over the size, placement, and display of items on property pages without requiring tedious manual editing.

Property pages and wizard pages can also display:

• Properties of a parent folder
• Custom commands
• Static text
• External website pages

The layout of property pages and wizard pages is divided into sections called panels. Every property page or wizard page must have at least one panel. Additional panels can be created to group related properties together with an optional caption and separator line.

Creating property pages and wizard pages is described in the following topics.