Property Grid

Use this window to view and change the design-time properties and events of selected objects located in editors (Design Surface) and designers (Project Hierarchy). You can find the Properties Window on Visual Studio’s View menu. You can also open it by pressing F4. It displays different types of editing fields, depending on the needs of a particular property. These edit fields include edit boxes, drop-down lists, and links to custom editor dialog boxes. Properties shown in gray are read-only.

The Property Grid selection always reflects the current selection in other parts of Visual Studio. For example, if you select any node in the Project hierarchy or in the Design Surface, the property grid will display the properties of this node.

The Property Grid header also contains a drop-down list that contains all sibling concepts for a given concepts. For example, in the following image, since have selected the Car entity, when we open that drop-down list, the grid shows all entities in the same namespace as Car:

When working with CodeModeler concepts, it’s however enhanced because it contains three categories of properties:

• Common Properties. The properties of a concept that you use more often.

• Advanced Properties. An extended set of properties that are rarely used.

• Aspects and Producers Properties. Properties exposed by aspects and producers added to the project

You can switch between these properties using the Property Grid top header:

Common Properties

Here is an example of Common Properties for the Car entity:

Advanced Properties

Here is an example of “Advanced Properties” for the Car entity concept:

Aspects and Producers Properties

Here is an example of “Aspects and Producers Properties” for the Car entity concept, with the BOM Producer added to the project (so its properties are displayed, in its own “Business Object Model (BOM”) category):

Note the Xml Model category always contain only one item that can be clicked. This can be used to add Xml Attributes to the concept being edited. This can be used if a producer or and aspect understands custom Xml attributes but doesn’t expose them through the Visual Studio Property Grid.