FactoryTalk view ME, communication shortcut status controlling visibility

Maybe someone here can help me or tell me this isn't possible.

I have two CLX L71 processors with one HMI. They are for two slicers that are part of the same system but they can be turned off independently for maintenance. Each one is messaging (identical messages) to get status from downstream equipment.

What I would like to do on the HMI (PVPlus 6) is display the information from slicer one but if the comms are lost then hide the panel of multistate indicators and display the identical information from slicer two. I have tried setting visibility something like this "If ({[CLX1]@Status}) = "ok" Then 1 Else 0" but it goes wire frame when the communications are lost.

Is there any way to do this with ME or would I be better off using slicer one to monitor slicer two and vice versa, then control visibility from the opposite controller?

Welcome to the forum!

Check out this thread - it relates to SE not ME but you might be able to do something similar? My (very uneducated) guess is that the visibility expression doesn't like solving expressions when the shortcut has an error value - perhaps if you just used one tag rather than an expression it might be happier?

Alternatively, you could try putting an always on tag into your PLC and basing the visibility off that. I did something like that just recently and it worked without wireframing - it wasn't quite the same situation as yours, so it might not quite suit your purposes, but it did the job for me!

If all that fails, a really ugly way around it is a rectangle the same colour as the background on top of the controls, visibility controlled off the always on tag to be invisible when the tag is on.