This activity releases resources from a token that have been acquired by an Acquire Resource activity. The resources will automatically return to the Resource activity they were acquired from. If the Resource(s) Assigned To does not return a label that has a resource assigned to it, this activity will do nothing and the token will be immediately released to the next activity.
Once a resource is released back to a Resource shared asset, the Resource will go through and check any tokens waiting in an Acquire activity, attempting to acquire a resource, and see if it's able to acquire it's requested resource.
Releasing Resources When Multiple Were Acquired
If multiple resources were acquired by a single Acquire activity while in object mode, a treenodearray of references to the acquired resources will be created. When releasing these resources using the Release Resource activity, not all of acquired resources will be released by default. By default, the Resource(s) to Release box is set to Last Acquired. If two Operators were acquired by one Acquire activity, the Last Acquired option will only release one of the operators. This can allow you to easily begin an operation with multiple resources and release them one at a time.
You can acquire resources from multiple Resource shared assets and assign them to the same label. Doing so will create an array where the last acquired resource will be index 1 of the array. For example, a label with the resources {/Operator3, /Operator2, /Operator1} acquired Operator3 last and Operator1 first. Releasing the Last Acquired will release Operator3 leaving you with the array {/Operator2, /Operator1}. When Operator1 and Operator2 are released, the label storing these resources will be deleted.
Accessing Resources from an Array
As you acquire multiple resources on the same label, as in the example above, you may need to access those resources to give them tasks to complete. If your resources are assigned to the label resource with the value {/Operator3, /Operator2, /Operator1}, using Label: resource or getlabel(token, "resource") in a property like Executer / Task Sequence of one of the Task Sequence activities will return the reference to the resource at the first index of the array. In this case, Operator3. To access one of the other operators, you can use a Value/Object From Array pick option.
Releasing Numeric Resources
Multiple numeric resources can also be acquired and assigned to the same label. Doing so will create a double array on the label. For example, if three Acquire activities are used to acquire 1 resource from three different Resource shared assets, and each resource is assigned to the label resource, the resource label on the token will display an array of {1.00, 1.00, 1.00}.
In this case where quantities are equal, it is not guaranteed that the resources will be released inthe correct order when using pick options like First Acquired and Array/Range of Resources. To ensure the correct resource is released you can pass a reference to the Resource shared asset into the Resource(s) to Release property.
However, if these same Acquire activities acquire different quantities, say 1, 2 and 3, the Release Resource activity will be able to correctly identify which resource is being released using the First Acquired and Array/Range of Resources pick options.
Array Type Mismatch
If you try to acquire a numeric resource on the same label as a previuosly acquired object resource, you'll get an Array Type Mismatch error. Resources must be of the same type to be acquired on the same label. This is due to the nature of arrays only handling one type each (treenodearray, intarray, doublearray, stringarray).
Connectors
The Release Resource activity only allows one connector out. See Adding and Connecting Activities for more information.
Properties
The following image shows properties for the Release Resource activity:
Each of these properties will be explained in the following sections.
- Name You can change the name of the activity using the Name box. See Name for more information about this property.
- Font The Font button
opens a window to edit the activity's background color and font properties. See Font for more information about this property. - Statistics The Statistics button
opens the activity's statistics window. See Statistics for more information about this property. - Resource(s) Assigned ToWhere the resource(s) to release are located. The return value of this field should be a label on a token where an Acquire Resource activity assigned the acquired resource to.
- Resource(s) to ReleaseThe conditions which specify which resources to release. If multiple resources were acquired and assigned to the same label, the label will display an array of all the acquired resources. To release a specific resource from the array, return the index of the array or an intarray of multiple indexes. You can also return a reference to the Resource shared asset that was acquired from. Doing so will search the array for resources acquired from the shared asset and release all of them. This can be useful when you are unsure of which index to release, or when releasing Numeric Resources as described above in Releasing Numeric Resources.
