Entering Instances

Instances are the actual data in your knowledge base. In general, it is a good idea to make sure you have structured your project as well as you can before entering extensive instances. If you have to make changes to your class or slot structure after instances have been entered, you may lose some information. In addition, if you add slots, you will not have that information for your new instances.

In this section, you will enter two instances for the Editor class.

To enter an instance for Editor:

  1. Click on the Instances tab.
  2. Click on Editor. The Create  button in the Direct Instances Pane becomes active, indicating you can now create an instance.
  3. Click on the Create  button in the Direct Instances Pane to create an instance.
  4. Enter Chief Honcho in the Name field.
  5. Enter 150000 in the Salary field. Notice that this field will not accept commas as part of the entry.
  6. Chief Honcho does not do any writing herself, so do not enter a byname.

Notice that the information for the Editor class changed when you created the instance. The (1) in parentheses after Editor indicates that this class has 1 instance.

To create another instance:

  1. Click the Create  button in the Direct Instances pane again.
  2. Type Mr. Science in the Name field.
  3. Type 60000 in the Salary field.

You have now learned to create instances. However, the default form can be difficult to deal with. Most obviously, the names you see in the Direct Instances pane are extremely unilluminating. In addition, no Editors have bynames, so the Byname field is not useful in this particular form. The next section shows how to edit forms.


Next: Customizing Forms

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