Cimplicity comments

I just came back from a short intro to Cimplicity Machine edition course where we did some basic programming and created a little PC based HMI.

The software looks similar to the very similar S7 course I attended awhile ago. Both software programs seemed pretty busy to me (lots and lots of windows, great big tool bars, and constant switching between tasks). Meanwhile the actual programming window had to be relegated to a little box in the corner of the screen because of all of the other windows necessary to keep open to keep track of whats going on. It seems to me that if a person was to do a great deal of development with either system a dual 21" monitor setup would be almost a necessity.

Any comments?

Don't forget that you need a Cray to run it.

Its the nature of Windoze programming.

Our programmers have two monitors as you suggest. I bet the cimplicity software guys do too and they also use 21 inch monitors. I don't know anything about the cimplicity, but I do know this windows stuff can be taken to the extreme. I always ask my programmers to minimize key strokes and how many times I must move my hand from the mouse to the keyboard and back. The clutter on the tools bars gets in the way too. There is a penalty for making me move the mouse to the tool bar and back. Once you get to know the program you should be able to use the short cut keys and eliminate the tool bars. I keep a 1024 by 768 laptop around for testing the interfaces just to make sure the windows can actually fit on the laptop. These are a few of my thoughts on HMI programming. We do a lot of that here but, fortunately I don't have to write it. I just evaluate our own HMI software. Now I will let you evaulate the software using this criteria if you wish.

I had a vendor come in last week to help me get my feet wet with Machine Edition...had never used it. The very first thing he did was have me change my laptop display settings to 1400x1050.It really made a big difference. Now I can see all 80 of the default windows.