Factory Talk ME - Best Practice?

Hi,

I have an application that has been causing the customer some issues with Memory Low warnings. From what I am aware, this is becoming a regular occurrence.

I went through a process during commissioning 7-months ago to negate this, and dealt with Tech Support quite intensively.

Their recommendation was to upgrade the terminal to the next model. The current model is a 64/64, we are looking to go to the 128/128 model. It is my understanding that this issue is to do with the way the terminal caches data when cycling through screens. The RAM use goes up.
What I am not 100% sure of, is will the increase solve the problem? In this document, (http://www.rockwellautomation.com/knowledgebase/) it says that there is a process limit of 32MB, and adding more RAM will not solve the problem.

Can anyone shed any light on this. The other option, is to try and re-work the application, but where to start is the main issue.
There is currently 203 parameter files. There is only 1 placeholder in the file, with the popup screen constructing the rest of the UDT from this placeholder.
Most (95%) of these are only accessed from the same screen, but the screen that uses the parameter files can be accessed from any of the 25 screens.

Reading through some tech notes, it says if the same parameter file is accessed from multiple screens, then it will add to the memory usage.
Is there a theoretical limit to parameter files?

Is there a way to achieve 'popups' without the use of parameter files, or to make the application more efficient? I have looked at global objects, but from what I can see, they are more for re-using the same object on multiple screens, not for performing the functions that I am trying to acheive (simple popups).

Is there no way to clear the cache ?

I don't have the software in front of me, but in the Display Setting for the graphic display isn't there an option for Cache Display? Can you turn that off? I might be confusing with View SE/32. OG

I don't have the software in front of me, but in the Display Setting for the graphic display isn't there an option for Cache Display? Can you turn that off? I might be confusing with View SE/32. OG

Click to expand...

I'm not sure, I will check this when next on site. For some reason I don't think so, or else surely it would of been mentioned to me by Tech Support?

The Plan B I am looking at, is to create a popup for each of the parameter files (200). This will reduce the 'caching' that is happening, but I am not sure how much this will 'grow' my application, and whether the current terminal size will handle it.?

I will do some testing today hopefully, it is a lot of extra work, but if it works and the problem goes away, then I guess it is worth it. (edit: So much for work as there is no 'find & replace', the Tag substitution function only allows for single objects, quite consuming, expecially with app. 10 tags per popup!!)

One of the original 'application size' issues that I had was due to the amount of HMI tags. I went away from HMI tags where I could to direct referencing, this halved the application size, and direct tags update faster than HMI tags as well.

As I was beginning the process of converting from Parameter files to individual 'popup' screens, I was beginning to wonder if this would actually solve anything?

I am basing the 'memory low' issue on the fact that it is the parameter files that are causing the problem, not the no of screens. Last time I was on-site, it was quite obvious that the operators were cycling through the screens quite often, but the no. of popups they were accessing was not great compared to the no. of screens they were cycling through.

In a technote/PV+ manual somewhere, it does say to cycle through the screens during development to avoid these types of issues, I did do this, and did not notice any issues, but then I wasn't operating the plant in production environment!

Any thoughts?