SLC 500 Slot/Word/Bit Won't Print in Ladder Report

raccjim

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Join Date
Sep 2012
Location
Reading, PA
Posts
90
All,
Forgive my lack of attention to detail, today a student asked me why when he printed his ladder in an RSLogix 500 report, even though he had his address display set to Slot/Word/Bit, the addresses from the RIO Scanner printed as Slot/Bit addressing. I checked View properties, but I don't see anything that would change the print properties... I can't believe I never noticed this before, but leave it to a student to bring it to my attention. (I've attached screenshots direct from Logix and from the print preview) If anyone has an answer for me as to why I sure would appreciate it! :oops:

SLC-500 PRINT PROBLEM.jpg
 
I simply cannot remember the last time I actually printed a report, let alone generate one. (Yes I can, I think I converted an RSS to PDF for someone on here a while back).

The moment you make a change in the PLC, the report is now "out-of-date".

Of course, you do have to have the luxury of owning, or having access to, the programming software to view the actual contents of the PLC, rather than a potentially "out-dated" report.
 
We have our students print their ladders for corrections, and later for their portfolios when they finish...


The moment you make a change in the PLC, the report is now "out-of-date".
They will soon find out this reality when they hit the workforce!
 
I found it odd at first, still do, but there are 2 separate properties settings.

If you go to File/Report Options, then click on Ladder Setup you can select Bit or Word/Bit and Single Line or Split Line.

But, if you right click on the ladder window and select Properties, then the Address Display tab it has a separate setting for the window display - obviously what your students have set Word/Bit while the report is set to Bit.

Still wonder why someone thought the programmer and the report reader (probably a programmer too) would want 2 different settings.
 
Last edited:
I found it odd at first, still do, but there are 2 separate properties settings.

If you go to File/Report Options, then click on Ladder Setup you can select Bit or Word/Bit and Single Line or Split Line.

But, if you right click on the ladder window and select Properties, then the Address Display tab it has a separate setting for the window display - obviously what your students have set Word/Bit while the report is set to Bit.

Still wonder why someone thought the programmer and the report reader (probably a programmer too) would want 2 different settings.

The two functions were probably written by different programmers who never managed to be in the same meetings ...

So both hedged their bets ..
 
Well, things like adding extra space between rungs on the print. Allowing color on the display but not on a printout. Including I/O part number on print but not on display. Little things like that where you want different content on the print out versus the display.

OG
 
Well, things like adding extra space between rungs on the print. Allowing color on the display but not on a printout. Including I/O part number on print but not on display. Little things like that where you want different content on the print out versus the display.

OG

So the developers concentrated on the little things, and one of them forgot to look-up how the guy had got his ladder bit addressing set up ....

And quite frankly, I cannot see why you would want your report colours to be different to what you see on the screen, it makes little sense other than perhaps introducing potential confusion for the report viewer, who is 99.999% likely to be familiar with the default software "view".

Everyone is familiar with WYSIWYG, why should a report be different ?
 
And quite frankly, I cannot see why you would want your report colours to be different to what you see on the screen, it makes little sense other than perhaps introducing potential confusion for the report viewer, who is 99.999% likely to be familiar with the default software "view".

Everyone is familiar with WYSIWYG, why should a report be different ?

Especially since reports are almost always printed to PDF. Cant remember the last time I had to provide a paper printout, or have even seen one. Has to be over 10 years ago, and mostly were for RSL5 projects, rarely RSL500, and have not printed one RSL/S5K project to paper yet.
 
I agree, we almost always print to PDF...now. But that wasn't always the case. RSLogix 500 isn't exactly new software. Printing to a PDF has not always been as common/easy as it is today. So having extra options for just a printout made some sense. Though today most of the features that were unique to a printout (ie. embedded cross-reference) are now available in the view options as well.

As for colors...Just because I can see red and green on my screen doesn't mean everyone else can. Up to 10% of the population has some form of color blindness and most of those cannot distinguish red and green. Providing a method for me to make a printout more accessible for someone other than myself seems like a good thing to me, whether it is physical paper or a PDF.

And yes, I agree that they missed the whole slot/word/bit on remote I/O. I guess since Remote I/O wasn't initially available with the SLC they never considered it. But still, at some point it should have occurred to someone to look into that setting. But at least there is a workaround.

OG
 

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