Tag Substitution in Factory talk view

Hi Guys;

I am fairly new to Factory talk view and Rockwell. I am working on project where doing 2 HMI application in factory talk view. Project has 2 lines exactly same and need some expert advice on best way to use tag substitution to save time.

When I finish my line 1 HMI program; I am planning to use tag substitution to preapare line 2. which one will be easy to substitute PLC tag or HMI tag?

My colleague is asking me to create HMI tag for most of the object and then substitute it for line 2 but I thought for line 2 I still have to create HMI tag while if I use PLC tag then I can do direct substitution and save more time?

This is fairly heavy application where I have nearly 50 Screens and more then 1000 tags to work with.

Whats your thought on this?

You can export HMI Tags database to a csv file and then edit it in your favorite spreadsheet software or a code editor (like pnotepad or notepad++). Then you can import the edited file into the second HMI program: the tag database is created on the fly.

With FTView, I prefer to use the direct reference tags.
The HMI tags add long/unnecessary delays when reading tags; not good for operator feedback when using buttons.
But in your case, HMI tags are probably better.

Changing the HMI tags will be faster if you edit the CSV export (post #2).

FTView does have a search and replace (for any text. HMI or D.R. tags) but it is very slow and does not replace in all components of the project. Just in the graphic displays.

If you only use HMI tags, then you know you only need to change in the HMI tags; CSV export/import will do that quickly.
Build Line1 project, copy that into a new project, then edit the copied project as Line2.
You can convert those HMI tags to Direct Reference later, after the project is done (KnowledgeBase article has that utility).