Use the Name field to give your group a name. This field will be grayed out for the master group, as it is a group that cannot be removed or renamed. The Name field is used in the study drop down menus for studies where you are asked to pick a transmitter group. The Description is shown on the main group dialog box. It can be used for extra information that helps identify the nature of this grouping.

Sectors

Add Sectors/Remove Sectors

To add a sector to the group, you’ll add it from the column on the right. Select the sector(s) from the right column to add to your group, then click on the Add Sectors button. The sector will be added to the list in the left column. To remove a sector, select it in the left column and click on the Remove Sectors button. Note that removing sectors from the left doesn’t delete the sectors (you’ll still see them on the right), it just changes their membership in this particular group. 

Toggle Active/Set All To active

In the left column, you also select whether a transmitter sector is Active or not. When you run a Multipoint, Route, or Area Study, the EDX software will use the sectors marked as active in the left column. The buttons between the left and right columns act on selections in the left column only. The Toggle Active button will change the active/inactive status of selected sectors and the Set all Transmitters to Active button will set all of the transmitters on the left to active.

Create New Group From Active/ Remove Inactive From Group

The Create New Group From Active button will create a new group from those transmitters marked as active on the left. The Remove Inactive from Group button will remove all inactive transmitters from the list on the left, removing them from group membership.

Delete Inactive From Project

This button will delete the inactive sectors on the left from the ENTIRE project, whether they are highlighted or not. Please use this feature carefully as once they are deleted, they’re gone. It’s recommended before deleting sites that you create an export of the current sites as a backup (see the Spreadsheet Editors).

Sites

Edit Site/Create Site/Delete Sectors

For any site shown on the right column, you can view and edit its detailed information by highlighting it (clicking on it), and then clicking on the Edit Site button. A new Transmitter/Base/Hub/Router Site Details dialog box will appear which will allow you to set all the detailed parameters for that transmitter site and sectors. This dialog box is also referred to as the Transmitter Site Details dialog box in the remainder of this article.

Clicking the Create Site button brings up a templates dialog box used to select the transmitter/sector template to be used for the new site. You can also edit and copy the templates from this dialog box. Once the template has been selected, the same Transmitter Site Details dialog box will display, but the location and name information of the site needs to be entered. Otherwise, it works in the same manner as described above. For editing transmitter details see Edit Transmitter Site Parameters.

To delete sites/sectors from the project entirely, highlight sectors in the right column then click on Delete Sectors.

Edit Site Template

When creating new systems with many transmitters which are the same or similar, it is helpful to use the New Site button “drag and drop” feature on the toolbar, to place transmitters on your map and use them in a study. The parameters defining the template for the transmitters placed in this way are entered via the Edit Templates dialog box, which is accessed by clicking the drop-down arrow to the right of the New Site button. The Edit Templates site dialog box is a special version of the Transmitter Site Details dialog. It contains all the parameters from site setup except for site/sectors names and geographic location. In this way, when you “drag and drop” new sites, or have them created using a system layout function in one of the specialized add-on modules, they will be completely configured as multi-sector sites with correct nominal power levels, directional antennas and pointing angles.

Because you may be working with different types of transmitters in the same system, there are actually five available transmitter site templates from which you may edit and select when you create a new site via the Create Site button on the Edit Transmitter Group dialog box or via the New Site "drag and drop" button on the toolbar.

When you choose to edit a template, you will see a dialog box that looks identical to the Transmitter Site Details dialog box described later. You can then set all the parameters for your template, including multiple sectors per site, just as you would when you are creating an individual site. Of course, since the location of the transmitter site is not yet known, and the site and sector ID’s are not yet assigned, the template does not give you access to these data fields.

When you have finished editing the template, in order to save your changes, click OK to close the Transmitter Site Details template dialog box and then click OK to close the small Edit Templates dialog box.

Group Global Edit

A very useful feature in EDX software is the ability to edit selected data for all the transmitter sectors in a group. You can do this by clicking on the Group global edit button. A new dialog box will appear in which you can select which parameters for a transmitter sector you want to change. You can click on any parameter in any list and it will change from black to red, indicating that when you click on the Apply to Group button, all the transmitter sectors in that group will be modified to have the highlighted parameter from the Group template.

For example, you decide to change the beam tilt to 2.5 degrees for all the transmit antennas in a group. Click on the “TX antenna beam tilt” selection item in the left column so it is shown in red. Then click on the Edit Group Template button. This will give you access to the group template details dialog boxes similar to the Transmitter Site Details dialog box described earlier. Click the Transmit Parameters button and then in the Sector Parameters dialog box, enter 2.5 for the beam tilt. To save the change, click OK, and then click OK again. Now click on the Apply to Group button, then click OK to save the change. You can now view the details for any of the sectors in this group and you will find they all have a transmit antenna beam tilt of 2.5 degrees.

You can repeat this procedure with any of the other parameters listed in the Global Tx Group Parameter changes dialog box. In fact, you can select multiple parameters (click on each so they are shown in red) and these parameters will be changed for all the group members to match the values in the group template when you click the Apply to Group button. 

Edit Filter

Clicking the Edit filter button opens the Group Filter Editor dialog box, which allows you to select and import sectors from another group based on various criteria. This filtering operation cannot be performed on the Master group as it always contains all sectors. However, the Master group can be used as the group to "select from".

The First Filter Condition check boxes must be set to select those sectors which appear in a certain position within the parent site’s sector list. Select all of them if you want to filter all of them. Next, clicking the Add button opens the Create Filter dialog box (shown below) which allows you to input additional filter conditions for the filter. For example, by checking “Include OR”, selecting “frequency” for the Attribute Name, and setting the Condition and Condition Value to “= 5800”, then all sectors set to operate at 5800 MHz would be included in the group. Once the logical conditions have been set for a filter, clicking OK saves the conditions and closes the Create Filter dialog box. Then, clicking Submit Query in the Group Filter Editor dialog box will assign all the sectors which meet the criteria to the group being edited.

Lock Rx to Tx for all sectors in group

Returning to the Edit Transmitter Group dialog box, when this checkbox is toggled, running any study that uses the base station receiver parameters will be fed the antenna system and transmission systems parameters from the base station transmitter setup. This does not overwrite the receiver information, so subsequent studies which are run after unchecking this selection, will use whatever parameters are in the base station receiver section.

For any site shown on the right column, you can view and edit its detailed information by highlighting it (just click on it), and then clicking on the Edit Site button. When you do, a new dialog box will appear where you can set all the detailed parameters for that transmitter site and sectors.