PanelBuilder ASCII tags

I seem to get a load of nonsense in the 'LEN' part of my ST file when I write from a PV550.
How do I point it toward the DATA part of the structure?

Thanks
Paul

Welcome to Panelview.net

I'm not sure about Panelview/Panelbuilder (although I tried a quick test, and it at least validated), but I used to have a similar problem when trying to work with ST files in the PLC.

It seemed to me that the command COP #N7:1 #ST10:0 10 would take the ASCII in N7:1-N7:11 and make a string 20 characters long.

Wrong. The first element in ST10:0 is ST10:0.LEN, and the rest is the string.

I figured out (somehow, and before I found it in the manuals), that you can reference the string text directly, on a "word" level, using the following syntax:

ST10:0.DATA[1]

This is a handy trick if you want to just look at the value of the fourth character of a string, without using the AEX instruction. You just reference ST10:0.DATA[4].

Back to your panelview question:

When you configure your Character Array tag, use the address ST10:0.DATA[1] as the address, and the array size to be whatever length the string you expect to be.

Since I don't have my Panelview, I can't check out if this works. Panelbuilder will validate with both the address ST10:0 and ST10:0.DATA[1], so I'm not sure just how robust the error checking is on it. But it's something to try.

Please let me know how it turns out, either way.

Boy did this cause me a headache one day last year. I think I had to call tech support on this one..

I think Allen's way will work but you can also just use a .1 instead of the DATA[1].

So, for instance you would have addresses in the Panelview Tag list such as:

ST40:0.1
ST40:1.1
ST40:2.1
.
.
.

Just know found a Knowledgebase article related to this: Click for article

There is another short article I have copied here:

Problem: Customer was trying to display an embedded ascii variable using a
string data table file using a SLC 5/04 processor. He was using ST20:1 as the
string address and nothing was being displayed.

Explaination: The first word of this data table file is the length, the high
byte of the length is a zero which terminates the string display immediately.

Solution: The correct address format to use would be ST20:1.1 to access word
one of the file which is the beginning of the ascii string.

Additional information regarding ascii entry:
When using the ST20:1.1 format for ascii entry, the panelview DOES NOT fill in
the string length (ST20:1.LEN).

NOTE: The ST20:1.1 format only applies to the SLC processors, the PLC5
processors only allow the ST20:1 format. The string length is filled in
when the processor type is PLC5.

Click to expand...

.