dcooper33
Lifetime Supporting Member + Moderator
Hi all,
I have a plant that has 7 identical production lines, each controlled by a 1769-L36ERM PLC running 32.11 firmware. These systems are as identical as they can be, by design. Same IO tree, same IP addresses in the devices, including the PLC itself. Each line has an identical control panel, with the only difference being a 1783-NATR router with different NAT rules. Same private IPs, unique public IPs.
So given all of this sameness, I had decided that maintaining a single ACD file rather than 7 would be a good idea. To that end, I created a master template program, and downloaded it to each of the 7 PLC's without issue. My thought was that after doing so, I could then go online using the one original template file with any of the PLC's by only changing the comms path to point to the desired target. However, this file requires an upload or download upon connecting with any PLC but the one used originally to create the template. After each download, I did save a unique copy of the template, and those copies go online with their respective controllers just fine, and each line works as far as process control, so no issues there.
In a nutshell, I'm not able to detect any differences between the template file and the saved copies that should prevent one going online with any other. The only difference I can see between each controller at this point is the serial number of the PLC itself. Has anyone else tried to do anything similar and found the secret handshake I'm missing here?
I have a plant that has 7 identical production lines, each controlled by a 1769-L36ERM PLC running 32.11 firmware. These systems are as identical as they can be, by design. Same IO tree, same IP addresses in the devices, including the PLC itself. Each line has an identical control panel, with the only difference being a 1783-NATR router with different NAT rules. Same private IPs, unique public IPs.
So given all of this sameness, I had decided that maintaining a single ACD file rather than 7 would be a good idea. To that end, I created a master template program, and downloaded it to each of the 7 PLC's without issue. My thought was that after doing so, I could then go online using the one original template file with any of the PLC's by only changing the comms path to point to the desired target. However, this file requires an upload or download upon connecting with any PLC but the one used originally to create the template. After each download, I did save a unique copy of the template, and those copies go online with their respective controllers just fine, and each line works as far as process control, so no issues there.
In a nutshell, I'm not able to detect any differences between the template file and the saved copies that should prevent one going online with any other. The only difference I can see between each controller at this point is the serial number of the PLC itself. Has anyone else tried to do anything similar and found the secret handshake I'm missing here?