Unit Editor

Units used in TPT are listed in the Unit Editor. The Unit Editor contains units that are part of the International System of Units (kg, m, s, A, K, mol, cd), TPT specific units (µs, ms, min, h, d) and the unit radian. These units cannot be customized. In addition, new units can be created based on the units that are part of the International System of Units.

Every unit has a name and a symbol which must be unique among all declared units.

Units can be used in calculations. To enable this function, see Units.

Components of the Unit Editor

Units can be used in declarations, test case modeling, or assesslets.

The following icons can be used to add, delete or duplicate units. You can rearrange units in the list and import or export them from or to an XML file, see Figure "Components of the Unit Editor".

creates a new unit
duplicates the selected unit
deletes the selected unit
exports units to XML file
imports units from XML file
moves the selected unit up
moves the selected unit down

Search units

To search units in the list depending on their names, enter a term in the search text field. To activate the use of regular expressions for search, select the Regular Expressions checkbox. For example, the term ^M.*(g|y)$ will search a unit name that begins with an M and ends with an g or an y. The search is not case-sensitive.

Create or customize units

Units that are part of the International System of Units (kg, m, s, A, K, mol, cd) and also TPT specific units (us, usec, ms, msec, min, h, d) cannot be changed or deleted. These predefined units are displayed in green.

Name

Choose a name for the unit. The name must be unique within the TPT project and differ from the symbol names of the other units listed in the Unit Editor.

Unit names are used in declarations, error messages or tooltips, as well as when importing or exporting units from or to files.

Symbol

The symbol must be unique within the TPT project and differ from the names of the other units listed in the Unit Editor. It is composed of alphanumeric characters (A-Z, a-z, 0-9). You can use underscores "_".

The symbol must not start

Symbols can be used in expressions added in step lists, or in assesslets.

Factor

Units may have a constant factor:

<unit name> = <factor> * <base unit dependency>

For example, min = 60 * 1 s. Factors can also be specified as a fraction of two integers, and powers. For powers the bases 10, 2 or Pi can be used, see Figure "Components of the Unit Editor".

Base units must not have factors.

For the values of the decimal and binary prefixes, click Import the factor coefficients.

Decimal and binary prefix
Prefix type Name Prefix Value
decimal prefix pico

nano

micro

milli


centi


deci

deca

hecto

kilo

mega

giga

p

n

u

m

c

d

da

h

k

M

G

10^-12

10^-9

10^-6

10^-3

10^-2

10^-1

10^1

10^2

10^3

10^6

10^9

binary prefix kibi

mebi

gibi

tebi

Ki

Mi

Gi

Ti

2^10

2^20

2^30

2^40

Offset

Units may have a constant offset:

<unit name> = <base unit dependency> + <offset>

For example, celsius = 1 K + 273.15

Base unit dependency

Every unit depends on one of the base units: kg, m, s, A, K, mol, cd.

Click to add further base units to the Base unit dependency line, for example, rad, bit or %, see Figure "Components of the Unit Editor". All other user defined base units can be used. Type 0 as exponent to remove them from the line.

The exponent has to be an integer.

When importing interfaces, see Declarations - Import Interface, into TPT, units can also be imported. Units, which are unknown to TPT (no unit with the same name or symbol exists), are added automatically into the Unit Editor by TPT. They are marked with the term (base unit). The Base unit dependency of these units must be entered manually, see Figure "Units imported into TPT project".

Units imported into TPT project

Representation

The formula of the unit specification of the unit is displayed, see Figure "Components of the Unit Editor".