'Trapping' text string in iFix

Hello,
I would like to be able to 'trap' a text string from a datalink, and display it in another datalink. The source data will change shortly after I have done this so I need to be able to break the link between the source data and what I display in my new datalink.
Essentially I need to know what the data was and what it is now after it has been changed by an operator.

Any comments appreciated.

You may want to try asking this question here:
http://gefanuc.bnsi.net/eforum/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=80

This doesn't sound that hard.... Am I missing something?

How is the first datalink getting its data - the PLC or an iFix tag?

Either way, use the source to do the trapping.

If it's via a data entry field, then edit the VBA of that object to include writing to the second datalink's tag.

If it's via the PLC, determine when you need to make a copy of it to the address displayed by the second datalink's tag.

Thanks for the reply. The first datalink is getting its data from the PLC as an ASCII string held in 9 16 bit W registers (2 characters per word).The datalink is in the form of an analogue register (AR) displaying text (TX in ifix) I dont really want to have to code the source for the second datalink in the PLC, as i need to do all of this for 14 datalinks. This means I would need to use another 126 registers in the PLC, and I would have to run all of these in a parallel FIFO to the source data for the current datalinks.
I will end up doing this if i cant find a simple solution in ifix.
Any further comments are welcome.

I am not sure about iFix but in Fix32 I would do this as follows:
I would use a popup picture to allow the user to change the string. On opening this picture the current value of the TX tag should be copied into two string variables. The user would edit one of these while the other remained unchanged. When the user accepts the change the edited variable should be copied back to the original tag while the unchanged variable should be copied to a "Last value" tag. If you need to keep track of these values while the Fix system is not running you could write both values back into the PLC. Alternatively you might consider writing the values to an ODBC database to provide a permanent record.

That sounds ideal but my problem is that I do not know how to achieve this. My VBA skills are very limited so I have been looking for a way to do it using iFix tools.

As I said my experience is with Fix32 and I know that iFix is different but the basic principle should be the same. Fix allows you to create a script attached to a picture which will run when the picture is opened. You should write this script to get the value from your TX tag and put this into the two string variables. One of the variables can then be used in a datalink which the user can edit. Once the variable has been changed a button can be used to accept the change and this button should contain a second script which sets the value of the original TX tag to that of the edited variable and sets the value of a second TX tag to that of the other unchanged variable.
These scripts should be very simple to write and I would recommend that you persevere with this until you get it right. Learning to use even simple scripts (or VBA) will make iFix (or any other SCADA package for that matter) vastly more powerful and once you are confident about this you will wonder how you ever managed without them.