FactoryTalk / RSView Product History?

Lakee911

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Join Date
May 2006
Location
Columbus, OH
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98
Hello,

I need to prepare a brief write-up of the history of FactoryTalk. I've gathered that it is from and built upon RSView/RSView32, but I'm not finding much information at all. Is this a closely kept secret that Rockwell is keeping? Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Thanks,
Jason
 
FactoryTalk is a service platform for a suite of software. I believe you are interested in FactoryTalk View. What exactly are you looking for? The graphics editor is very similar to RSView32 so it’s a nice transition for people who were use to RSView32. RSView32 was old a tied to 32 bit architecture and they needed a true server/client platform so they developed FTView.
 
Don't think it is a secret. It is more that this isn't something most people care about.

Advisor PC was Allen-Bradley's DOS-based HMI program. Advisor PC had EGA graphics and typically ran on 286 or slower PCs..

ControlView was the next step and was still DOS-based but supported better graphics and better multi-tasking support. This is what I started with. Some of what you see in FT View comes from ControlView. I think this was their first HMI that could talk to non A-B equipment. But others may have slipped in using the old 1770-KF2 interface. Computers using this usually had at least a 386 CPU.

I vaguely recall a ControlView for Windows, but I can't really recall anything about it. This would have been in the Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 days when Wonderware was all the rage for their "fancy" Windows graphics. If I recall, it was a development tool for creating ControlView (DOS) applications. But I could be confusing that with the similar PanelBuilder for Windows used for the original PanelView terminals.

RSView32 was Windows based and was very similar to ControlView but finally offered the graphics to match up with others on the market. It supported Windows 95 up through Windows 7 (32-bit only).

RSView Enterprise was the original name for FactoryTalk View which is their current HMI offering. Some aspects of RSView32 and ControlView still exist. If you dig through the file structure you will still see references to the name "RSView Enterprise".

Each generation typically had the ability to import projects from the previous generation.

OG
 
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Thank you, everyone. This little bit of information is helpful and I can piece together some other things.

By the way, I apologize for not getting back to this thread. After creating the post, I forgot about because I decided to write to the suits at Rockwell. After a long discussion about what I needed, I thought we understood each other. A week later (and a day late too), I literally received four sentence of useful information and none of it was anything new (to me). So irritated w/ Rockwell at the moment. I should simply be disappointed in myself. I knew better...
 
FactoryTalk started out terrible and has gone to unusable garbage. :)

I believe WinView was pre-RSView

"WINtelligent VIEW" was a product made by ICOM. They were purchased by Rockwell and the product was discontinued. So it shares no direct history with RS/FT View.

OG
 
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