Hi all,
I have a concept I have implemented with other PLCs whereby I use alias variables in the PLC to expose cross-reference information to the HMI.
The main purpose is to link physical I/O to a functional tagname (eg NIU3Rack3Slot5Ch12 to TI1101.PV) but it can be used for other purposes such as external interlocks (process interlocks).
The whole point of this is to not have to "configure" this information in two different places (as this becomes an issue of reliability as well as the additional per-point engineering time). It is also the mechanism for extracting other info from the PLC tag to expose this in the HMI
The concept is:
1. Process tag is an alias to the hardware I/O tag
2. Publish the PLC tag export (on change, intervals or on update request from HMI)
3. Build relational database from the PLC tag export to allow linking of I/O to process & vice-versa(on some systems the OPC server can perform this role)
4. When I/O module is selected in HMI it shows detail of the allocated process tags per channel (associated tag, description)
5. When process tag is selected in the HMI it shows the associated hardware I/O channel associated with the tag
Now to the specifics.
I am trying to formulate an approach with a ControlLogix and Citect HMI.
The ControlLogix has the alias feature and this is exported with satisfactory info in the tag export to csv.
The primary question I have is whether there is any other way to generate this csv export other than manually opening up Studio 5000 and exporting the tags (eg API or something else)?
The secondary question is whether anyone else has done something similar with ControlLogix and whether you have any good tips.
Cheers.
I have a concept I have implemented with other PLCs whereby I use alias variables in the PLC to expose cross-reference information to the HMI.
The main purpose is to link physical I/O to a functional tagname (eg NIU3Rack3Slot5Ch12 to TI1101.PV) but it can be used for other purposes such as external interlocks (process interlocks).
The whole point of this is to not have to "configure" this information in two different places (as this becomes an issue of reliability as well as the additional per-point engineering time). It is also the mechanism for extracting other info from the PLC tag to expose this in the HMI
The concept is:
1. Process tag is an alias to the hardware I/O tag
2. Publish the PLC tag export (on change, intervals or on update request from HMI)
3. Build relational database from the PLC tag export to allow linking of I/O to process & vice-versa(on some systems the OPC server can perform this role)
4. When I/O module is selected in HMI it shows detail of the allocated process tags per channel (associated tag, description)
5. When process tag is selected in the HMI it shows the associated hardware I/O channel associated with the tag
Now to the specifics.
I am trying to formulate an approach with a ControlLogix and Citect HMI.
The ControlLogix has the alias feature and this is exported with satisfactory info in the tag export to csv.
The primary question I have is whether there is any other way to generate this csv export other than manually opening up Studio 5000 and exporting the tags (eg API or something else)?
The secondary question is whether anyone else has done something similar with ControlLogix and whether you have any good tips.
Cheers.