Boring PanelView Plus Graphics

I was wondering what people are doing to update the look of their panelveiw screens. My company has templates that look like they haven't been touched since 1990. I'm looking for a more "modern" feel. Any help out there would be appreciated.

Hi,

I have done 1 project in PanelView, it is pretty difficult to work with. This is what I ended up with, let me know what you think

Panels should be informative and easy to understand. Every color needs to have meaning. Panels with shadows, effects, to much details are generally not quite good ones.
If you know to implement cimplicity with aesthetics, then it is ok.

dodge134 said:

I was wondering what people are doing to update the look of their panelveiw screens. My company has templates that look like they haven't been touched since 1990. I'm looking for a more "modern" feel. Any help out there would be appreciated.

Click to expand...

Dodge134,
Based on the fact that this is your first post on an industrial forum, we assume you are new to industry.

While you may be accustomed to changing your "smart phone" every 12-months, and are forced to re-learn different key-strokes to achieve the same task, this is undesired in industrial manufacturing. Change cost sh#t-tons in money and training.

I am in full support of change that is fruitful, and productive, but change for just a "modern look" may cost your employer money, and you will not get a raise to buy the newest version the hottest phone.

Our company has simple basic panel views that describe the movement. I.E. Lower is displayed when it can be & Lowered is displayed with green back ground when it is. We also do permit blocks so that way customer can see that there is a reason the cylinder does not move when the button is pressed.

We get a few people together to see what is the best explanation sometimes because not everyone is a controls engineer that will operate the machine. That helps out a lot. As for the looks Who Cares as long as anyone can come up to the machine and understand what they are doing when that button is pressed.

At least they have templates !

There have been various attempts to create industry standards for HMI screen layout and functions. There's an outstanding book I haven't bought for myself yet called "High Performance HMI" [Amazon link].

If you're going to be responsible for improving HMI performance and usability, that book would be a great investment.

I'm re-doing a WinCC HMI right now and I'll give you a handful examples from that project.

1. Data entry fields should have a white background. Look on this page... the Title and Text fields invite you to click inside them and start typing. Similar display-only fields should have a light gray background.

2. I think that actual "looks like an 800T" pushbuttons are a waste of screen space, but it's worth it to make buttons look different from multi-state indicators. You can use native borders, or my favorite, graphic backgrounds that look like actual keyboard keys.

On the HMI I'm repairing, the original author added "PB" to every label that was a pushbutton because the operators couldn't tell yellow buttons from yellow indicators.

3. Come up with a color code and stick with it. If you're going to use green and red for "Start" and "Stop', use a darker color for the not-active state and a bright color for the active state.

4. Put your rows of menu buttons on the bottom and right edges (at least, in English-speaking countries and where right-handedness is most common).

This one is a little counter-intuitive at first, especially because so many people are accustomed to top-edge tabbed displays on Web browsers and many HMI devices provide a left-edge set of soft keys (like Red Lion).

But once I noticed how often the screen was blocked by my hand while reaching for a navigation button (and while viewing the new screen for the first time), I was a convert to bottom-and-right navigation bars.

On the HMI I am repairing, the navigation buttons are sometimes clustered on the left, sometimes on the upper right, and occasionally in a row along the bottom, depending on which screen is active.

The new gradient shading in FactoryTalk View 7.0 and the inclusion of the Symbol Factory library can help your application look more modern than the old blue-rectangles look of PanelBuilder.

And just because I'm in a bad mood I'm going to describe a couple more things I've seen recently.

NEVER create a pop-up that cannot be closed. I had to shut down the machine at the main breaker to clear one yesterday.

Always test your message and alarm text, and give yourself as much space as you can.

This machine has hardware Start and Stop buttons near the HMI and there was a message that read "To reset the [process sequence] press S....." because the string field was one character too short for the message.

Be concise but also include useful troubleshooting information in your alarm text. I always include an Alarm Code number that a PLC troubleshooter can search for in the program comments, and another colleague explicitly puts the [Word/Bit] address of the alarm trigger from the PLC in his Alarm text.

I agree with the others. I find that too many times we think about what we can do with a design. Not long enough about what we SHOULD DO. I know I have been guilty of designing a HMI as if another programmer will be using it. Not a Bubba the hairy knuckle Truck Driver that usually is working with it. Fancy graphics and multiple pop ups are cool to look at but if the operators using the unit have no idea what they are looking at it may do more harm than good.

I suggest reading:

www.rockwellautomation.com/resources/downloads/rockwellautomation/pdf/events/automation-fair/2011/psug/afpsug11_ed09.pdf

and

www.marinetech.org/files/marine/files/Curriculum/IROV/Module13/gruhnhmidesignreviewed-110722135448-phpapp02.pdf.

While I don't completly agree with everything they say, the do make some good points, and if nothing else, so some examples of what NOT to do

Thank you for all of the suggestions. I've been in the industry for 20 years and our screens haven't changed. These particular changes are not being driven by our company. Lord knows we have enough to do without redesigning the HMI screens. These changes are being driven by our customers. They think our HMI screens look horribly out of date and would like to see them upgraded. Again, thank you for all of your suggestions. I plan on checking out the Rockwell links, and possibly purchase the book suggested by Ken. And, Ken, I hope you get in a better mood soon. Summer's comming!