Text Display In FactoryTalk PC Vs HMI

When I build my HMI applications in FactoryTalk View Studio, I take a bunch of time to make sure everything is neatly lined up, evenly spaced, and symmetrical. However, occasionally when I compile the runtime and load it onto the HMI (AB PanelView Plus 1500 5.10) a bunch of the text doesn't look right and doesn't align like it did on the PC.

It seems to happen randomly, one day it'll look fine, then I'll make a change and rebuild the runtime and some other screen will not display like it did before. Am I doing something wrong?

On the PC:


On the Panel:


How can I prevent this and ensure that it always looks the same on the PC or on the PVP?

The two example you've given are obviously not the same. I don't know if one is an updated version, but there are obviously considerable differences between the two. The background is different, the fonts are different, and the content of the text is different - scan times are measured in (us) in one version and (ms) in the other. Perhaps it's simply a matter of loading the wrong .mer file into the PVP.
I'm not saying that what you are describing doesn't happen, but the examples you've given do not provide any evidence of it since they are obviously not from the same project.

The first thing to be sure of is that you have the same Font installed on the PV+ as you are using on the development PC.

IIRC, the earlier PV+ terminals didn't have Arial installed, but that was the default in the Studio environment.

When the Runtime file didn't find Arial, it fell back to rendering the text in its "System" font.

The PV+ "System" font looked similar enough to Arial that most folks didn't notice. But System is spaced slightly differently, so aligned text commonly looked different.

The other thing I've found is that when you stretch an object with text in it, the text size stretches too. This is a nagging thing I dislike in the software, and I've had it result in some weird-looking text.

Ken Roach said:

The other thing I've found is that when you stretch an object with text in it, the text size stretches too. This is a nagging thing I dislike in the software, and I've had it result in some weird-looking text.

Click to expand...

The only time I've seen this is on an actual text box. It can be turned off by unchecking the "Size to Fit" checkbox in the Text Properties diaglog box. When that box is checked it will stretch/shrink the text to fill the entire text box - obviously creating some pretty weird looking stuff sometimes.

Unchecked, and the text is forced to the size you've selected. I generally prefer this, but you've got to make sure the text box is big enough to include all of your text or it'll disappear, especially when you're embedding a variable in the text box and the number of characters in the content changes.

The part that I really dislike is that none of this is obvious when you're setting up the properties on the dialog box. To me, if "Size to fit" is checked then the drop down for the font size should be grayed out or eliminated as an option.

cbuysse said:

The two example you've given are obviously not the same. I don't know if one is an updated version, but there are obviously considerable differences between the two. The background is different, the fonts are different, and the content of the text is different - scan times are measured in (us) in one version and (ms) in the other. Perhaps it's simply a matter of loading the wrong .mer file into the PVP.
I'm not saying that what you are describing doesn't happen, but the examples you've given do not provide any evidence of it since they are obviously not from the same project.

Click to expand...

They are the same project...I had noticed the ms/us error and fixed it in the project right before I took the screenshot but hadn't loaded it onto the panel yet. The background is the same, plain black, you just see the reflection of my hand holding my camera phone to take a photo of the PanelView Plus, I don't know if you can do a digital screen capture on a PVP terminal.

Ah ha! It was the "Size To Fit" option. I turned that off, and adjusted some of the text boxes so the text was showing again and everything looks correct.

Thanks!

That little bugger has caused me more problems than I like to think about. I've never checked to see if there was a way to default that to off, sounds like a project for this afternoon.

Glad I could help.