pauly said:
...It is a brave person that downloads what is assumed to be an up to date copy don't you think?...
I would not say brave. I would say they are more foolhardy. You would surely, and at minimum, perform an upload first when onsite as a backup before downloading anything new into the processor.
pauly said:
...I have received a copy of the existing project and added the axis groups and axis information off line to do some tests....
I would also say that you should create a copy of what you've received and only work on the copy, leaving the original file as sent.
If you still have a copy of the "as sent" ACD project file then I would suggest you open it and go to...
Controller Properties>File
Here you can see when the project was
Created and when it was last
Edited or saved. This may give you an indication of when the last edit was performed on this project before it was sent to you.
You would like to think that a prudent customer would have uploaded a fresh copy from the processor before sending it to you. You would also like to think that a prudent programmer would request that the customer does exactly that. Then the prudent programmer does not have to guess whether the copy sent to them is current, or not. But I know that sometimes a customer might have backups but does not have the wherewithal to perform an upload.
pauly said:
...what would be the best way of adding the new axis groups,tags etc and motor information to the on site project?...
If there are any edits in the working copy, then the other way around might be quicker?
If you still think that the working copy might have some edits that you don't have then, when onsite, to check for differences, I would upload the project from the processor and perform a compare between it and your edited version using the Compare Tool. This should show up any basic editing someone may have carried out that may not have been in the copy sent to you. You can then transfer any edits found into your edited copy. It may be quicker to transfer "their" edits, if any, to your copy than the other way around. Once done, or if no edits found, then you can just perform a download of your edited copy. Once your hardware has been installed and configured then you should be ready to download.
If you want to preserve tag data values, while downloading your edited copy into the controller, then I would suggest you use the Data Preserve Download Tool. This will automatically save the current tag data values to a CSV file, perform the download, and then restore the tag data values from the CSV file back into the processor.
You would now have your edits, their edits, if any, and the preserved tag data values in the processor.
Regards,
George