Trends in PLC 5

kenwright

Member
Join Date
Feb 2010
Location
Chattanooga, TN
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How do you view a snapshot taken of a trend from a PLC 5? I had a trend running, took a snapshot with the RSLogix 5 software "take snapshot" option, now i do not know how to view it if possible. Any help would be appreciated.
 
As far as I know, the only thing that it's good for is for creating overlays. You can take a snapshot of a trend, then go to chart properties and overlay that snapshot on the live trend or possibly even another trend for purposes of visual comparison. I did not find any way to view the actual data in the snapshot with any other tools, but I did not look very hard when I had the same question...
 
or you can use Excel to open the DBF file that the snapshot produces ... then you can do any type of number crunching, analyzing, graphing, etc. that you desire ...

snapshot_dbf.JPG
 
Ron, when you do that, do you only get the visible portion of the trend or will it capture all the pen records for the duration the trend has been running, including those that are already "off the screen"?
 
sorry ... you only get what's on the screen ...

AB has a "stand alone" program ($$$) called RSTrend that will log and store the data for days (or longer) at a time if you like ... it works (and looks) a lot like the free "limited edition" built-in feature that we're discussing here ... people sometimes confuse the capabilities of these two tools ...
 
I always use "Print Screen", then paste the screen shot into a new Word document that is set up in landscape orientation.

This also lets me type comments and notes after each screen shot.

Hint: Make sure your most important pen's scale is represented on the scale bar on the left...
 
that's a good "keep it simple" suggestion, Kent ... and that's basically the method that I use to produce the quick simple graphs in threads like the one below:

http://www.plctalk.net/qanda/showthread.php?p=27963&postcount=13

on the other hand, for more involved projects sometimes it's helpful to bring the data into an Excel spreadsheet ... that way you can selectively turn various traces on and off - and massage them into different locations on the graph ...
 
For our data intensive projects I pull everything into SQL(using and just setup excel to pull from there as needed. Gives me the flexibility to look at whatever/whenever.
 
Greeting Dravik ...

For our data intensive projects I pull everything into SQL(using and just setup excel to pull from there as needed. Gives me the flexibility to look at whatever/whenever.

I'll agree that's actually probably the "best" and most flexible way of doing it – but I think that you're probably using something beyond RSLinx Lite to provide the communications link – correct? ...

I think that many (most?) of the people interested in the "snapshot" idea lack that sort of horsepower ... many technicians who have access only to "shop floor" laptops for troubleshooting purposes quite often need just a quick simple (and cheap) way of grabbing a screen capture for later reference ...

thank you for the extra viewpoint ...

 
Greeting Dravik ...



I'll agree that's actually probably the "best" and most flexible way of doing it – but I think that you're probably using something beyond RSLinx Lite to provide the communications link – correct? ...

I think that many (most?) of the people interested in the "snapshot" idea lack that sort of horsepower ... many technicians who have access only to "shop floor" laptops for troubleshooting purposes quite often need just a quick simple (and cheap) way of grabbing a screen capture for later reference ...

thank you for the extra viewpoint ...


Ron:

Granted, But I should mention I use this from my process laptop w/ SQL and the PLC-SQL program running locally. So it isn't unreasonable from that standpoint, If w/ a higher cost(for the PLC->SQL program).

Regards,
Dravik(Michael)
 

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