How to create a generic panelview application

I was wondering if anyone had any tips...

We have a piece of equipment, made up of several identical stations. Each station is controlled by a Panelview all talking to one SLC500. Instead of having a separate application for each station, can I have a generic application, where I can select a station number from the panelview, and it will use that station's tags? For example....

Station 1 uses N11:0 for fast speed and N11:1 for slow speed
Station 2 uses N12:0 for fast speed and N12:1 for slow speed
Station 3 uses N13:0 for fast speed ..... and so on.

It appears that I can't use indirect addressing, so I was wondering if anyone else had used some other ways to do this. I would like to have a spare unit on the shelf with the application loaded A maintenance tech could swap the unit out and on power up, the user would select the station and be back up and running.

Also for programming it would save time having to add the same changes several times.

Any ideas?

Is this a Standard PanelView or a PanelView Plus ?

The Plus has a feature where you can use "placeholders" to replace part of a Tag when you're opening a window.

Most attempts I've seen to build a "universal HMI" application in any software system don't go well. FactoryTalk View ME in particular runs out of easy-to-use functions for this sort of thing fast.

Each time I've tried to do a "universal application" I have up and built a bunch of variations from the same application, then saved them with informational names.

This is especially applicable to PanelView Plus, where you could load dozens of different *.MER files on a flash card and select the proper one when installing the terminal.

If I read you right each panelview is only ever connected to one PLC

If you are using Panelview Plus just change the RSLinx enterprise connection the to PLC

MichaelG said:

If I read you right each panelview is only ever connected to one PLC

If you are using Panelview Plus just change the RSLinx enterprise connection the to PLC

Click to expand...

And then make sure you manually set the IP address of each panelview, and then make sure none of the objects in the application present any "stale" data or cause conflicts.

I am with Ken, get one application perfect, make a copy, re-tag or change types for conflicting objects (push buttons in particular), there'll be no confusion about which is which...When doing multiple HMI, I like to put the station name in "bright lights" on a master page where appropriate, just to make it obvious if someone ever does dump the wrong program in it. I prefer to only have one app in internal storage, and copy of same in external (CF) storage which stays inserted in the PV+.

This makes midnight cloning of the hardware realistic to achieve (with a detailed instruction sheet) by Bubba.

Normally I will use completely separate data files for each HMI, but if there are few buttons and more data entry objects, and I don't need to track which HMI made the changes, sharing tag addresses can work....just be careful...

Paul