WinCC Flexible. Improvement requests.

If you know of a problem with Siemens WinCC Flexible, or you have an idea for a general improvement, then post it here in this thread.
I shall collect the inputs from all posters, and assemble a list with all suggested improvements.
Posters (of new original points) will be accredited.
Anonymous input will be accepted.
You can also PM suggestions to me, and you may choose to stay anonymous if you want to.

Here is a link to the list of improvements.
I will update it on a weekly basis.

Deadline is March 1.

I shall post a poll to determine which improvements users finds the most relevant.
This will in the end result in a letter to Siemens with the all the suggested improvements, ranked after "relevance".
Members that are willing to be named in the letter are more than welcome. You dont have to post suggestions to be named, but you should aggree in the greater part with the list of required improvements. The more people named in the list, the more weight it will carry.

Notice:
In this thread you should post about WinCC Flexible only, not STEP7 or other Siemens softwares.

I got just a couple off the top of my head.

1. More standard functions in when scripting. For example message boxes, file open/save, etc
2. Print preview for reports at run time. Sometimes I only want to display the information on the screen. If I could display a print preview for reports then it would cover this need.
3. A table type object for displaying data in a format like Excel
4. Be able to load text list from a script
5. Updated recipe object that will allow for searching for part numbers.
6. Fix copy/paste of data for objects. I had a problem this week were I did a paste into a setvalue event. I did not notice but is was not in bold and would not work. I sent the project to tech support and they told me that I had to reselect the tag until it went bold. This worked. Most of the time this type of problem is shown in the output window but not this time. Its hard enought to get things to work when you make your own problems but this will not work just because it didn't like the paste.

I'll post more when as I think of them

Hi Charles.

I will put your suggestions in the list.

Re 3. This is allready possible, and there is an example project with it. Only, it takes a lot of scripting and screen manipulation to get the job done. So I agree that there should be a more "shrink-wrapped" component for this, maybe an ActiveX.

Re 4. This is allready possible with scripts. That is, to read lines from a text file, and then distribute it into tags or screen objects. Maybe you can describe more deailed what it is that you are after.

Re 4. This is allready possible with scripts. That is, to read lines from a text file, and then distribute it into tags or screen objects. Maybe you can describe more deailed what it is that you are after.

Click to expand...

I want to be able to load text or graphics into a text/graphics list. I don't think you can do this at runtime. These could then be used in Symbolic I/O fields or Graphic I/O Fields.

1. Fix the issue with using a non-standard USB cable driver. If you just happen to load the native driver for a USB link cable, you CANNOT ever use the cable with Win CC unless you reload Windows. Currently you must use only the Seimens driver provided on their CDs.

2. Reduce the file size for the application. I loaded a simple project with 4 screens that used to be 67K in Pro Tools Lite, it is now 10M in Win CC. That is a little large even by today's spagetti-code standards.

CharlesM said:

I want to be able to load text or graphics into a text/graphics list. I don't think you can do this at runtime. These could then be used in Symbolic I/O fields or Graphic I/O Fields.

Click to expand...

You can load graphics into WinCC Flexible and display it in a graphical list. Do you want to be able to load the graphics or texts from a file at runtime ?

Black Jack said:

1. Fix the issue with using a non-standard USB cable driver. If you just happen to load the native driver for a USB link cable, you CANNOT ever use the cable with Win CC unless you reload Windows. Currently you must use only the Seimens driver provided on their CDs.

Click to expand...

I'll put that in the list.

Black Jack said:

2. Reduce the file size for the application. I loaded a simple project with 4 screens that used to be 67K in Pro Tools Lite, it is now 10M in Win CC. That is a little large even by today's spagetti-code standards.

Click to expand...

This is allready in the list.

You can load graphics into WinCC Flexible and display it in a graphical list. Do you want to be able to load the graphics or texts from a file at runtime ?

Click to expand...

Yes at runtime

It should able to see S7 address (or other PLC address) by point the mouse over the tag name.

List has been updated.

For your information.

The list of WinCC Flexible improvements has been updated.

Notice:
Please check in the list if one of your wishes has not allready been mentioned.
If you want to discuss one of the allready existing entries, then please copy the entire entry, header and all, add your input, and post that in this thread, or PM me.
This to make my job of collecting everything a little bit easier.Thanks.

WinCC Flex Improvements

I would like to see the following improvements made:

1.) Ability to create different screen sizes
2.) Improve ActiveX integration, I attempted to use some of Microsofts ActiveX controls and they did not operate correctly
3.) Full VBScript would be nice not just a condensed instruction set
4.) I dont know if this is related to their SQL database tracking Delta steps but I have made several changes in the past that did not take affect in the Runtime, it appears that a rebuild all would have to be performed to observe the changes.
5.) More trending options would be nice. Default the ruler to the left or right as opposed to center only. Title Bar, X and Y axis descriptions.
6.) More Controls such as option boxes, check boxes etc like in WinCC.
7.) I dont know if it is just on my install but it wasnt like this in Flex2004, in the project window on the left, I have undock and redock the window to have full range of scroll bar.
8.) For the 1st 50+ times I use WinCC Flex help, I always get the Message Box "opening for the 1st time, writing files"
9.) Finally when it comes to licensing, every option is an additional license with most of the associated costs being insignificant, for example, recipes, change control etc. If I recall it was under $50.00 US for each. I was shocked at how cheap the license was. I thought if the license is that cheap why not just include it as a bundled price and give the end user all the available options instead of nickling and diming him for each small add on to Flex.

Jesper, Thanks for taking the time to compile this list of requests for future improvements.

At the moment it's not possible to use complex datatypes with multiplexed tags, for example Date_and_time type. It's not a bug, but possibility to use date_and_time type would be useful for me last time today.

Another problem I found today was a conversion error with DbConverter. It's not directly a WinCC flexible problem, but bounded up with Flexible working. Converter reserves only four bytes for date_and_time tag, although it should reserve eight. All tags after that tag are messed up, absolute address is four bytes behind from correct address.

Miika said:

Another problem I found today was a conversion error with DbConverter. It's not directly a WinCC flexible problem, but bounded up with Flexible working. Converter reserves only four bytes for date_and_time tag, although it should reserve eight. All tags after that tag are messed up, absolute address is four bytes behind from correct address.

Click to expand...

Edit: I know this is off topic, but VBA code is not protected and it's easy to change the offset from four to eight and change date_and_times DBD to DBB. After those changes the converter will work properly.

I just started working with WinCC flexible. So forgive me if this is possible. (If so please let me know what I'm doing wrong...)

Better ways to create tags. Most of the time a have a DB for display functions. Now I have to create the tags one by one, all by hand. It would be nice if it was possible to select the entire DB (or just a struture or selection) and then click on create tags. This would then lead to all the tags being created automatically.

Werner said:

I just started working with WinCC flexible. So forgive me if this is possible. (If so please let me know what I'm doing wrong...)

Better ways to create tags. Most of the time a have a DB for display functions. Now I have to create the tags one by one, all by hand. It would be nice if it was possible to select the entire DB (or just a struture or selection) and then click on create tags. This would then lead to all the tags being created automatically.

Click to expand...

You can do create tags of a db with Dbconverter. Notice my previous postings...

Hi Rookie_Eng,

I have a few questions or comments to some of your input:

1.) Ability to create different screen sizes
What exactly do you mean. To have different screen sizes, either the entire application would have to switch size at runtime, or it should be possible to have several independent screens open at a time.

3.) Full VBScript would be nice not just a condensed instruction set
I thought that the VB Script there is in WinCC Flex is actually a "standard" VB Script. If it is different, then that is news to me. Do you have an example ?

4.) I dont know if this is related to their SQL database tracking Delta steps but I have made several changes in the past that did not take affect in the Runtime, it appears that a rebuild all would have to be performed to observe the changes.
I have heard this many times, but I am unsure if it is really a bug, or if it is because users forget to use the "Rebuild all" function. How about you ? I think that a useful addition could be a warning like "It is now 5 saves since your last rebuild".

8.) For the 1st 50+ times I use WinCC Flex help, I always get the Message Box "opening for the 1st time, writing files"
I havent seen exactly this before, but many other "niggles". I would like to hear from others if they have experienced the same.

9.) Finally when it comes to licensing,[..] for example, recipes, change control etc. If I recall it was under $50.00 US for each. I was shocked at how cheap the license was.
I think you miss an extra zero in the price. In my price list the Archives and the Recipes options costs approx 280 Euro / 350 USD.
And the combined Archives + Recipes option cost approx 400 Euro / 500 USD.