RS 5000 messaging

Just to clarify - you can't use the same tag to both send and receive data. In PLC1 you will need a produced tag to send data to PLC2, and a consumed tag to receive data from PLC2. In PLC2 you will likewise need a consumed tag to receive data from the PLC1 produced tag, and a produced tag to send data to the PLC1 consumed tag.

Once again, there is no logic required to have the produced and consumed tags send and receive the data. It will happen regardless. If you have all four tags set up correctly, you should simply be able to modify the produced tag in each PLC, and see the corresponding consumed tag change value in the other PLC.

Perhaps you understand all this and have it set up exactly like this - if so, then carry on. But the way you worded it made me think that perhaps you were trying to use the same produced/consumed tag for bidirectional data transfer, which does not work.

Thanks, ASF. I pretty much assumed that. I realize how finicky the whole scenario seems.
After creating the UDT, it is safe to assume you can then refer to those tags in a routine that utilizes said tags to perform an action? So you have a routine using Produced tags.0 which is a photo switch and you wish to energize a bit, this can be performed in a new routine but referencing the tag in the UDT which I assume is now also located in the controller tags/global.

Well, when you create a tag you tell it whether its controller (global) scoped or program scoped, so that question is largely down to you to answer. That said, I *think* that produced/consumed tags have to be controller scoped. I'm not 100% certain as I make pretty much every tag I ever create controller scoped anyway.

You can use a produced or consumed tag in exactly the same way as any other tag. It behaves exactly the same, the only difference is that a produced tag might be being read by another PLC somewhere, and a consumed tag will be being written to by another PLC somewhere. Think of your produced tag like a digital output and your produced tag like a digital input, and you'll be on the right track. You can't write to (e.g. OTE) digital inputs - well, you can, but they'll be overwritten the next time the physical input is scanned (or in the case of your consumed tag, the next time the remote PLC is read).

One caveat that's not specific to produced/consumed tags but to the compact/control logix platform in general: I/O updates (including produced/consumed tags) are asynchronous to the program scan. In your application it probably won't matter, but worth searching this forum for the many, many posts on the subject just for your information and awareness.