Allen-Bradley Tags Questions

fasacrifice said:

Hi All,

I’m working on this system with L33ER.

About 110 DI,DQ,AI,AQs

36 Valve Bank DQs

80 Power Supply with CAN Communication. Each Power Supply has 16 SINT in, 16 SINT out. They are grouped in 5 cabinets (16 Power Supply each). Each cabinet has CAN-EtherNET/IP Gateways. So PLC sees one cabinet as 256 SINT in, 256 SINT out IO.

It’s ok to deal with regular IOs but having problem with PS IOs. How to deal with this many IOs? I was planning to use User Defined Data Types but I just realized that I cannot reach these types of Tags from HMI so I cannot use them.

PS IOs are all mixed around. Some bits carry information some don’t. And also some INT values carry information. I can use them as they are but their current names make no logical sense. I think I have to create all new tags and alias them with IOs but there are thousands of them. Can I use Excel? I don’t see anywhere to import tags from Excel. Any suggestions?

Thanks

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jdbrandt said:

You can surely import tags and descriptions. There is a menu item for that, and, with that many tags, it is surely the way to go.
What I do is to create a typical tag, then export.
THEN I edit the exported .csv file, so that I keep the header info and column headings.
Others will no doubt query as to why you can't see UDT's from an HMI. That's unusual. Are you sure they are CONTROLLER scoped, and not PROGRAM scoped?

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fasacrifice said:

Thanks all. Finally I found that import function for Tags. Some how they put it under Tools menu separated from the Import functions under File menu.

There is no such a thing seeing UDT from HMI. I have to create a tag under Controller Tags and use that UDT as Data Type for that variable then I can see from HMI. It looks OK now. Thanks to all.

I create my Tags in Excel and import now it's easier but not as easy as Siemens. Because for example I create aliases for all my IO modules to get consistent names but their aliases looks like Local:6:I.Data.0. So I have to iterate number 6 and 0 for each module. It takes time in Excel to figure that out easily.

My other question is about UDTs. I can export them but they get exported as L5X. How can I edit them in Excel and create a new UDT then import again?

I use AB PVPlus 1500 HMI.

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jdbrandt said:

UDT is not a tag name, it is a type of tag.

If you make a custom, or user-defined tag called MOTOR, for example, and make it have a BOOL called .AUX and a BOOL called .COIL and a DINT called .STARTS, you can then define a tag using this structure.

You would make a tag called PUMPMOTOR, of type MOTOR and its elements would be:
PUMPMOTOR.AUX
PUMPMOTOR.COIL
PUMPMOTOR.STARTS

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fasacrifice said:

Thanks a lot. I understand this part. My question is how I can create and edit UDTs with Excel?

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