In PI AF, implement a dynamic mechanism that makes very large (or very small) values readable and quick to understand.
Example: If I have an attribute "Bytes Allocated" which has a unit of bytes (B), and a value of 228839424 B, I want AF to display either:
assuming display digits is set to -5 for this attribute.
Let's say the value grew even larger, say 2288394245 B, AF would display either:
The goal is to keep the number to the left of the decimal place between 0 and 999, and have the exponent adjust DYNAMICALLY (based off of the value) to be multiples of 3, which directly aligns with SI units. OR more ideally, just change the unit all together (preferred for attributes which use non-metric/SI units).
This would actually have an added bonus that configuring units for all attributes would become significantly easier, as you would just assign the standard base unit to the attribute, and let AF handle the scaling according to your UoM database. This could be a toggle setting on the attribute itself ("Use Engineering Notation" or "Automatically Scale Units with Value") if you would like to lock an attribute to using a specific unit.
If I have a PI Vision screen measuring current output of a system, my operator should not have to do mental gymnastics to convert 2.345E-05 A to 234 mA (it took me a minute to even type that out to make sure I didn't mess up the conversion).
"But JD, just set the attribute's unit to mA!" Yeah, until a power surge happens and the operator has to interpret how big of a problem 8.324E+07 mA is. Go ahead and do that one in your head as a fun 'at home' exercise.
The reality is there are many applications where the order of magnitude of an attribute's value can be miles apart. I have another attribute that monitors a process's "elapsed time", which could have a value anywhere from seconds to years. 8.3283E-08 years is not helpful, and 8.3283E+07 seconds is also not helpful.
