Hitting the walls in Siemens Protool HMI

Hi Guys, I just started to make an interface for an HMI system for our siemens safety plc's on our line. I am using step 7 for the sts/lad blocks, and protool 6 sp3 for the interface.


From the get go, it has found it self to be a rather useless program, very much propietary. Our scenario. 13 lines, each with about 10 statios, each with 3-6 modules = 5000 IO's

We need to make a screen for each modules. It was proposed to show the status of each mopdules io, by making a unique screen for each, and statically inserting the textual description. I had expieremented with multiplex-tags. and have succeful made a system to jump from module to module, with chagingn the input masking.

My question is. Is it possible to create an array of strings, with the io address and description shown, for each station, while creating ONE generic status screen, that would handle every module?

I am sort of hitting the wall with this app, as you can't seem to create objects during runtime at all.

Hello Jwall!

How about doing this on the plc side...
Create a generic screen on the hmi pointing to a generic db in the plc. Then just change the information in this db based on the selected station on the HMI.

Just an idea...

Cheers
Borte

(edited due to typos...)

As Borte says, you're going to have to go about this by doing your multiplexing in the PLC. The Multiplex Variable feature in ProTool (which I've used fairly heavily) is not your answer here, because each of the variables inside the Multiplex, counts towards your Power Tag total.

5000 i/o points !
How are you going to squeze that into the 2048 tags limit ?
And you have max 2000 alarms and/or event messages.
I think that Protool Pro is only useful from small to medium/small projects. You are using the wrong tool for the job I think.
Borte's suggestion sounds like the easiest way to eek more out of Protool than it was designed for.
You may also look into making the alarms more or less "generic" ("Too long time to close valve X" for example).

Hi Guys,

When I said 5000 Io,s but its divided into 12 different hmi projects, so I would then be under ~ 1000 for each so far ( with other fault tags...etc). Also I am using an MP370 panel ( 12 of them , one for each line)

truthfully I have inheritted this project, orignally designed by a Siemens trainer / technician.

I just want to avoid making the 140 screen required by each module, and statically determing text. I have all the io address's in access and excel right now, and can make a text output that would create the sts text to load into step 7, to make an extra db, if neccesscary. I am trying to avoid that, cause I am only allowed to upload the blocks during the break between nights and day shift (3 am...)

Just an update. I have gotten it all to work using text lists.

My project has been narrowed down to only 500 tags. The siemens guy who came in a did the pilot made a tag for each address bit. I have changed to multiplex words instead, which is taking 16 bit to a word, instead of 16 tagsw for each.

In short, don't trust your trainer

Obviously your MP370 cannot access 5000 tags, so you must use some tricks. Without enough info about your application here is one possibility:

1)Use one of the PLCs (perhaps you'll need to add one additional PLC to your large system) as a "data collector". This central PLC will collect data from all other PLCs. Your machine selection on the HMI will write a value (like machine No index) into the master PLC, that is very simple to implement in ProTool. Based on the "machine index" value, using Block Move instruction, the master PLC copys the data of the selected machine into a data area from which the HMI reads the information. If your HMI needs also to write to the many PLCs then your code will have to be somewhat more complicated, but certainly not impossible. In ProTool you can use event functions to "let the PLC know" that a new value was written to a tag. The master PLC will have to write this new value over the MPI or Profibus to the proper PLC.
This is just a general idea, need more info to give you a solid advise

Good luck
A. Harel