Changing ID Names

ID names can be up to 16 characters long. There are three ways of modifying ID names in the database.

• To change the name of an item, double-click on the item and type a new ID name in ID Name.
• Specify names used by ID Name Assignment for Copies in the clipboard. See Moving and Copying Groups of Items and Copying Subsystems for more information.
• To change ID names of multiple items already in the database, first select the items you want to modify. Then, click Change >ID Name (toolbar menu: Edit > Change ID Name).

Change ID Name

Clicking Change >ID Name (toolbar menu: Edit > Change ID Name) displays the following:

Figure 1: Change ID Name Dialog Box

This dialog gives you the following choices.

Change ID For These Types Only: No matter what item types are in the current selection, only item types you have selected here will be modified.

Replacement Type: 

• If you select Generate unique name, each selected item will receive an automatically-generated unique name that is based on the item type and the next number in sequence. For example, if the last transformer you added had the name "TX-15," the first changed transformer will get the name "TX-16."  The new name is not based on the item's current name. 
• If you choose Character replacement, the ID names are modified according to the information in Replace these characters and With these characters.

Replace these characters:  Type the characters that you want to replace with different characters. For example, if you have a group of items with ID names of T5/99NL-1, T5/99NL-2, T5/99NL-3, etc. and you want to change them to T5/97MP-1, T5/97MP-2, T5/97MP-3, etc.; you would type 99NL‑ as the characters to replace.

In this field, there are special characters you can use, as described below.

• Beginning of name (<): Ignores a match unless it starts at the beginning of a name. For example, if an item's name is T5/99T5‑3 and you want to replace only the "T5" at the beginning, you would type <T5 as the characters to replace.
• End of name (>): Ignores a match unless it is found at the end of a name. For example, if an item's name is T5/9AB5/AB and you want to replace only the occurrence of "AB" at the end, you would type AB> as the characters to replace.
• Wildcard, one character (?): Matches any one character, no matter what it is. For example, if an item's name is T5/949-3" and you want to replace the slash and the next three characters (whatever they are) with the letter "G", you would use "/???" as the string to replace, giving "T5G-3".
• Wildcard, one or more characters (*):  Matches any number of characters, no matter what they are. For example, if an item's name is T5/949-3 and you want to replace everything from the "/" through the "-" with the letter "G," you would type /*- as the characters to replace, resulting in T5G3.
• Next character is literal (\): This option lets you deal with the other special characters without them being interpreted as having special meanings. For example, if an item's name is <T5/949‑3 and you want to get rid of the "<", you would type \< as the characters to replace. Without the backslash, that "<" character would be interpreted as Beginning of name option described earlier. For an actual backslash, type two in a row: \\.

With these characters: Type the new characters you want. Each occurrence of the character string which is in the Replace these characters field is replaced by the characters given here.

Note: Do not use <,>,?,*, or \ in With these characters, as they have no special meaning there.

Name conflict handling: It is possible that, after doing the character replacement you requested, the resulting name will be one that already exists in the database. Use this option to tell EasyPower what to do if a name conflict occurs. 

• If you choose Generate unique, a new name is created as described above for the Replacement Type field.
• If you choose Don't change, EasyPower leaves that item's name alone.

Any time a name conflict occurs, the affected items are listed in an error report.

After the operation is done, a dialog box comes up telling you how many names were changed.

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