RS Studio

Hi I am very new to the automation industry...I have been working at Sanden Machine for about 10 days. My job is the HMI designer...this company is moving from a micro controller based system to plcs and it is my job to learn the software for developing the HMI interface...but I am having trouble importing PLC tags from a micrologix 1500 into RSView...when rstudio is opened up it creates a default OPC server RSlinx Enterprise....it seems as thou if you are using the ML5000 there is no need to use use RSLinx...but if your try to import offline ML 1500 tags (.rss) it won't let you...so I am stuck...I can't get the PLC tags into my HMI...Does anyone have experience doing this. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thomas Franklin

Sounds like you're using RS Studio ME

In order to commnicate between your offline HMI application and your offline PLC application, you need to setup the HMI communication offline. You'll find the Communication Setup dialog box in your Application Explorer under RSLinx Enterprise.

The "Local" tab displays how you have setup your device shortcut(s) for your offline programming and the Offline Tag File shows what PLC application you've linked to. If you have setup a device shortcut and the offline tag file correctly, then you would be able to browse the offline PLC tags from the tag editor.

Another hint with Studio ME, Make sure you properly reference your device alias'. You should be creating an alias to each device you are communicating with in Linx Enterprise, that is the 'Path' to the tags in the device.

One other thing, with ME, SHUT DOWN RSLINX. Regular Linx and Linx Enterprise should co-exist, but they don't always, and some very wierd problems I've had have been tracked down to that.

The "Local" tab displays how you have setup your device shortcut(s) for your offline programming and the Offline Tag File shows what PLC application you've linked to. If you have setup a device shortcut and the offline tag file correctly, then you would be able to browse the offline PLC tags from the tag editor.

Click to expand...

RS Studio Seems to be geared more towards using the RSlogix 5000, platform, as oposed to the RSLogix500. When doing this it it only asks for a .acd file(RSLogix5000). I cant seem to get it to recognize the .rss(RSlogix500).

Tom and I have had a hard time getting this system going, we can import the tags in the tag editor, but we can not link them to the PLC we made the shortcut for in the "Local" communications tab.

Has anyone been able to set up the Studio ME to work with the MicroLogix, or SLC PLC's

Thomas,

I have been using RSStudio for a little while. Where exactly are you getting hung up at? You should be able to go to the tag import and export wizard under Tools and import whatever used addresses you have into RSStudio. Select the RSLogix5 or 500 option and then browse to your PLC program and it should then give a list of tags and allow you to import. If you are using RSLogix 5000 then you can get the tags from a common database.I will be more than happy to help you out however I can. I would be more than happy to play around with the files myself as well.

Brian

I got turned around I was just doing this for myself and remembered that you have to go to the dialog where you assign tags to a button or whatever then right click in the tag list window to import directly from an RSS file

Allan,

I have been able to setup ME for use with SLC processors. I have one on my desk right next to me that I have setup to use as a testbed.

Brian

I have done this before but has been a few months now, I cannot remember if it was an EAS file or a CSV file, in offline state in RSView Studio, go to your tag import utility, open your import wizard and check the data file types at the bottom of the window to see what files can be imported.
You can set up the online comms with the PLC and PVIEW + connected to directly access the tag database of the processor, but will have no descriptions and be limited to word access and not bit access, kind of a pain in the *** depending on the application.
In my application I imported my tags from RsLogix, deleted the ones that I had no use for, and used it specifically for bit access, then I set up my online tag access to get all of my word level data, ie timer/counter PRE, ACC, specific data, etc.
Hope it helps.

Be sure to check PVIEW+ firmware revision # on terminal and AB knowledgebase for latest firmware upgrades, older firmware was terrible, lock ups, crash's etc, they have a firmware update utility and firmware posted be sure to have the latest greatest to avoid alot of headaches.

Almost forgot a step, after you determine the file that can be imported to RSView Studio "EAS or CSV", open the plc program in RSLogix, and go to Tools, do an ASCII export of the file to a folder in your computer in the required format, EAS or CSV

Thanks for the info,
How ever Tom and I had done these steps before. We had no problem bringing tags into RSView, but they were not assocated with the controller.

This is what we did to make it work
1. In comunications setup create a "Device Shortcut" in the Target tab to point to the desied PLC
2. "Tag Import and Export Wizard" from the pull down menu(nothing else worked)
3. In the Source project point to the .med project that was created for this aplication.
4. Select the format to import the Tags as, we used .eas
5. when the Topic pop up comes up after pressing Finished, type in the the name of the "Device Shortcut" created in step 1. This was the peice of the puzzle that real hung us up. Once once we figured out that the "Topic" was the "Device Shortcut" the tags were now pointing to the right place, and all was well.