Citect Tag creation ???????

I am new to Citect.

Is there a way to create new tags other than the pop up widow in the project editor.

I can not import them from my OPC server because I will not have access to it for several weeks.

Is there some sort of spread sheet residing somewhere or an application that is used ?

You can edit variable.dbf with Excel. But do this with caution, if you mess up the column width for instance Citect can't read it anymore.
To add tags, first add the last tag in the project editor for the number of tags you want to create. (keep clicking "add" and watch the record count go up the number you want to add). Compile the project (yest you get duplicate tag errors but this is the only way to assign OIDs to the tags)

Close Citect Explorer. Open variable.dbf and edit, cut, copy, paste all fields EXCEPT the last OID column. This is the Object ID and is unique for every entry, and when manually editing the variable.dbf you can get a compile error telling you to reset the OID count. This is a parameter which needs to be set once, after this a compile will re-assign all OIDs.

But I believe when using OPC there was a catch with the OID fields... I believe an OID reset was fatal for OPC tags... read the Citect help on OID reset for this.

I think the OID issue was resolved at version 6. At least I never have a problem now. I simply open the dbf file and insert rows before the last row, adding the data as required, then save. Copying rows is fine (duplicate OIDs are sorted out by Citect). When you first reopen Citect, use the pack function before compiling

I am used to doing it this way I guess...

But about OPC I am not sure, the help information of the OID reset parameter of 6.1 clearly states

Warning! Don't set this parameter to 1 if you are using OPC drivers.

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If you want to go down the road of Excel there is a save_dbf excel spreedsheet in the bin folder of the citect directory.

open this and enable macros.
Then open the variable.dbf in the project directory that you wish create the tags.(Back up first!!!!!!!)
So when you want to save use the right mouse button and select the required option from the menu

After adding the tags return to citect explorer select the project you edited the tags in then go to project editor and select pack from the file menu.

Compile and run
if you wish to use calculated values for your tag names create these in a seperate excel sheet copy/past values to variable.dbf

then save_dbf pack compile
if you donot pack after using excel the new tags will not be seen in citect.

Great tip, I did not knew about save_dbf. Saves some clicks...
Is there a way to integrate this macro permanent in Excel ? I mean so that you don't have to open save_dbf every time you want to edit the variables database ?

What is the PACK funtion and what is its pupose ??

From the help:

Packing a database re-indexes database records and deletes records marked for deletion. If you edit your CitectSCADA databases externally to CitectSCADA, you should pack the database afterwards.

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