FactoryTalk "Click-to-Trend"

Alright, I know trending seems to be a big topic; but I have not found anyone asking this question and perhaps it is because it cannot be done.


Is there a way to allow a user to pick from a list of variables, instead of pre-defining these at run time?

My reasoning for this is because this system will have about 100 sensors that the customer would like the ability to see a short-term trend of at the local PanelView Plus station. For longer term trends they have the software like AspenTech.

I am using FactoryTalk ME.

We did something similar in RSView but we had to make a VBA application to do it, you may want to try it... I have never used VBA (or VB) in FactoryTalk

We stored all the data on the network (local) with the main RSView/VBA then we wrote another RSView app and it was used to get the data from the network that the engineer needed with the dates and pens (I/O) that was needed, using the raw data they could make any trend that was need to look at the process

I think you should be able to create a trend screen and create different parameter files to call up based on which sensors you want to monitor.The scaling would probably need to be the same for all sensors. I just tried it with an application i have and it worked.I created 2 parameter files with different tags and then i created a trend screen (on top)not replace. Then on my main screen i put 2 go to screen
buttons on it and had each one open the trend screen calling the parameter file i wanted and it worked well. I could toggle back and forth between the 2 trend selector buttons and the trend would change. Hope this helps

Thought, I will update everyone that Parameter Files are the solutions. Although for those with FactoryTalk Studio 7.00 it also looks like AB has decided to make it an option to allow the "Connection" tab with the "GoTo" Button.

However, I have not experimented with this version yet. I learned about this 7.0 feature from here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G02J9lEwn9k

Thanks for the help