Designing and Managing Behavior Models - Using Alarms - Defining States -
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Defining States

When you first open the Alarm Definition window, the state-diagram drawing area contains one state. This state is named Ground and is dark green (by default), indicating that the severity of the state is "Normal." This state is unique not only because every alarm must contain it, but because no active alarm is ever in this state. The alarm manager instantiates an alarm when it receives a trigger corresponding to a transition from Ground to some other state, and if an alarm instance transitions back to Ground, that instance is deleted.

All of the other states that you want your alarm to track you must create yourself. For example, the author of the predefined alarm IfLoad (interface load) created two nonground states: medium and high.

IfLoad Alarm

The medium state is of Medium severity, and the high state is of High severity.

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Note    In this alarm, the author has renamed the Ground state "low." This state can be renamed and its severity can be changed, but it cannot be deleted.

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For instruction on creating new states, resizing state icons, and deleting states, see the following sections:

• Defining a State
• Changing the Size of the State Icons
• Deleting a State