What is the Best HMI /Scada Package on the Market

What would you guys say is the best HMI /SCADA Package on
the market. RS View ,Wonderware, Fix Intellution,Win CC,Etc.
According Tag Deals ,Being user Friendly, Logging, Etc.

Thanks,

It depends on what you want.

RSView is easy and works well for most HMIs, but it has some holes in it that really make it hard to do certain things. RSView's recipe object sucks, the datalogger works well, but batch trending database management is kludgey and there are some things it just wont let you do that we want to do for batch trending. If you want to do anything fancy you need a good handle on VBA.

RSView SE. This is not a mature product. Its got lots of holes. Really nice and very easy to set up though.

Underware is a good package, everything I've seen so far I've been impressed with but I have only done one wonderware job and that was a while back.

USData Factory link. Hmmm, where to start. Super flexible, but that comes at a price. Its really difficult to set up compared to all others I've used. You probably should go through the training courses, I found that they made a big difference. But FLWin is far more expensive than its worth and they nickel and dime you to death for every little feature.

Citect. Really nice system. Very flexible, but it requries a good handle on CiCode programming, but lots of programming as opposed to configuring objects.

All of the more popular HMI packages are pretty good, its a competitive market. The thing to look at is price and local support.

If you have a small system take check out the LookOutDirect package. I've used it on several projects, easy to configure, good data logging abiltity, reasonable price, and good comm driver support.

Greetings all,

For me I like the AB/Wonderware combination, however not cheap... I saw a demo of an application called Elipse, looked very similar to wonderware in many aspects and very inexpensive... Has anyone else heard of Elipse?

Everyone will give comments based on their own particular background and application expertise. The answers to this kind of question must be interpreted in this light. My background is from a largely Rockwell perspective.

Wonderware was first to market with a Windows based MMI which means it has a large installed base with many happy and loyal users. WW more or less set the standard that all others followed. The biggest drawback as I see is the need to script just about all animations in WW's proprietary language. Comments I have read suggest that the company itself is no longer the customer friendly entity of old since it's purchase by Invensys.

Following close behind was Intellution. The first generations of FIX were a more stable than their equivalent Wonderware product of the time and seemed on an unstoppable rise to domination until they released iFix. I am not certain why but it appears that the radical changes in this system alienated a lot of their customer base and they have wilted since. Again the purchase of Intellution by GE seems to have been more to serve the corporate's agenda than to the benefit of the customers.

At the outset Rockwell made the wrong decision not to do a Windows based MMI and stuck with the reliable but otherwise very dated DOS based ControlView for far too long and this product effectively knocked them right out of the market during the early 90's. Then they purchased a small independent which gave them the WinLinx and WInView products from which RSView32 and RSLinx were developed. Coming from behind these products have carved out a solid customer based and are now very mature, fully featured and reliable.

The next generation the RSView ME/SE product is not yet mature and although it's very powerful in some aspects (ie the FactoryTalk feature once you get it working). However I think it will be at least another major Rev or two before it is fully ready to take on the world.

Citech is the favourite of many. This Australian based company has an impressive product, in particular it pioneered the idea of Supergenies which hugely improved editing productivity. Lots of no extra cost drivers and a very customer focussed organisation Citech is no toy and can point to some VERY large installations running at very high performance.

The rest are the either also-rans, or minority products from small independents. Some are excellent in their own right but are not likely to be dominant in the near future. What the market is really waiting for is the next new thing, a disruptive product that changes the game.

Hi

We are using WINCC very easy to configure(Tag logging,alarm logging message reporting graphics),2 software packages RT &CS a variety of communication capapilities apart from C_script which requires guys of that kind of speciality

If you truly understand the USData Factorylink data engine, it can do wonderful and powerful things. I've done many Wonderware, iFix and RSView32 apps (lots of pros and cons), and when serious computing is required, I tend to fall right back to Factorylink. The biggest draw back here is Factorylink support sucks. The local guys out here in So. Cal are no help.

Never done Citect due to concerning about support from Australia and product familiarity.

I haven't found any package that I truly like. Just give me my choice of OI touchscreens.

I've had hands on experience with a few: RSView, RSViewSE, Lookout Direct, Infilink. And I've seen and heard things about other HMI software. There are different pros and cons to each package.

My boss would say there's an "opportunity" here for someone to impress me.

AK

Hello Daniel Camacho and other members

Yes i heard and worked with elipse scada and elipse E3 for many months. There are two versions of Elipse, Scada and E3. Both are inexpensives and easy to use, I recommend E3 version, is the best because its has new interface, better reports systems, drawing tools that looks like a rsview and some kind of server/client connections.
I dont recommend SCADA version because you cant replace tags in a screen, i mean you have to open each animation and change its tag. You lost much time doin it, mainly when u do a project of 2000 tags like mine heheh.



Regards,
Bruno

Thank you very much for your opinion but did you notice the date of the last post?


May 10th, 2005, 02:13 PM

Hmmm... Mr. Grisen this kind of comment is very weird, i really dont understand what are u meaning with that.
If all people didnt post here because the topic is old, the database certainly would be smaller.
No problem it might be useful for another person, not only for Daniel.

robert mooli said:

We are using WINCC very easy to configure

Click to expand...

Is WinCC very easy? Definedly you don't know what is very easy.
I never seen anything crueler than WinCC.

Dude..., You should expand that to a paid magazine article!

PhilipW said:

Wonderware was first to market with a Windows based MMI which means it has a large installed base with many happy and loyal users. WW more or less set the standard that all others followed. The biggest drawback as I see is the need to script just about all animations in WW's proprietary language. Comments I have read suggest that the company itself is no longer the customer friendly entity of old since it's purchase by Invensys.

Following close behind was Intellution. The first generations of FIX were a more stable than their equivalent Wonderware product of the time and seemed on an unstoppable rise to domination until they released iFix. I am not certain why but it appears that the radical changes in this system alienated a lot of their customer base and they have wilted since. Again the purchase of Intellution by GE seems to have been more to serve the corporate's agenda than to the benefit of the customers.

At the outset Rockwell made the wrong decision not to do a Windows based MMI and stuck with the reliable but otherwise very dated DOS based ControlView for far too long and this product effectively knocked them right out of the market during the early 90's. Then they purchased a small independent which gave them the WinLinx and WInView products from which RSView32 and RSLinx were developed. Coming from behind these products have carved out a solid customer based and are now very mature, fully featured and reliable.

The next generation the RSView ME/SE product is not yet mature and although it's very powerful in some aspects (ie the FactoryTalk feature once you get it working). However I think it will be at least another major Rev or two before it is fully ready to take on the world.

Citech is the favourite of many. This Australian based company has an impressive product, in particular it pioneered the idea of Supergenies which hugely improved editing productivity. Lots of no extra cost drivers and a very customer focussed organisation Citech is no toy and can point to some VERY large installations running at very high performance.

The rest are the either also-rans, or minority products from small independents. Some are excellent in their own right but are not likely to be dominant in the near future. What the market is really waiting for is the next new thing, a disruptive product that changes the game.

Click to expand...

Awesome article, worthy of Golden Nugget status...

We need a "smilie" for Golden Nuggets...

PiEaCe!

EDIT: I gotta pay attention to the dates! NEWBIES: Start a new thread! Paste hyperlinks to the archived ones instead of appending them!

I wonder if Phillip would care to revisit this article and refresh his summary 3 years later...

zova said:

Is WinCC very easy? Definedly you don't know what is very easy.
I never seen anything crueler than WinCC.

Click to expand...

it is some kind of getting use of WinCC, if you have time to make practice you learn it after a 1-2 try. Interface is good and library is rich also, all the difficulty is in the necessary menu and right-click configurations in assigning tags

gayesa said:

it is some kind of getting use of WinCC, if you have time to make practice you learn it after a 1-2 try. Interface is good and library is rich also, all the difficulty is in the necessary menu and right-click configurations in assigning tags

Click to expand...

I completely agree with you - WinCC very easy to learn, very easy to understood shortage of licence when job had been started, very easy find out that an inconvenience is sequent of MSSQL not WinCC and so on (I deals with controls and don't want to hear anything about SQL).

But there are at least two reasons to escape WinCC:

1. Compatibility of version is poor. Simple upgrade is impossible in half of cases. Investment's safety issue...
2. System requirements don't presume fanless hardware.