FTView SE GO Parameter as Number

Hi folks,

I have a situation where a popup is called from a global object button with a single parameter. This parameter is a 4 digit hard-coded number (e.g. "2063"). This parameter is referenced in the popup to display certain setpoints from a PLC (an L8 ControlLogix, if that matters). For example, setpoint "{/RSLinx::[PLC_Shortcut]T_#1_Full_SP}" or something. The setpoint interaction works really nicely, and when #1 is 2063 is properly displays the setpoint for T_2063_Full_SP.

What is not working nicely is animations based on this parameter. I want to animate the visibility of a graphical element visible or invisible based on an equality statement including this parameter. I also really need to avoid VBA at all costs (project request). For example, I would like to animate visible a graphical element if #1=2063. No matter what I do, I can't get this to work and I suspect it is because #1 is a string and 2063 is an integer.

Has anyone ran into this problem before? Is there something I can do to work around this? Can I convert the global object from string to number somehow?

This is FactoryTalk View SE network distributed v12.

I have tried:

All combinations I can imagine of curly brackets, quotation marks (double and single), and single vs. double equals signs.

Using a working literal number numeric variable from a text object (which works) in the visibility animation (e.g. "/*LN:5 #1 NOFILL DP:0*/ = 2063").

Trying a horizontal position animation instead of visibility (to move the graphical element out from behind a background colored square).

Set a text object's caption to the global object parameter and use textobject.Caption in my visibility animation (e.g. Text95.Caption = 2063).

Set a text object's caption to the number and used the textobject.Caption in my visibility animation (e.g. {#1} = Text95.Caption).

Thank you!

This isn't a great answer, I'm afraid... but it's the only one I could think of, and may be useful should you get another object like that 2063 in the same project.

You can look at what Extended properties the tag T_#1_Full_SP has and set one for either visible or invisible.

Then in your visibility expression put in something like:

T_#1_Full_SP.@<extended property>

I thought the functions tab had something of this sort in the animation editor, but it doesn't seem to have anything interesting.

cardosocea said:

This isn't a great answer, I'm afraid... but it's the only one I could think of, and may be useful should you get another object like that 2063 in the same project.

You can look at what Extended properties the tag T_#1_Full_SP has and set one for either visible or invisible.

Then in your visibility expression put in something like:

T_#1_Full_SP.@<extended property>

I thought the functions tab had something of this sort in the animation editor, but it doesn't seem to have anything interesting.

Click to expand...

This is an interesting solution, but unless I make the tags for all tanks (including ones without the setpoint) then it'll throw errors. I like it and I think this method could be handy in the future as a solution to other problems.

I ended up playing with HMI tags (both strings and analogs) in place of 2063 and still couldn't get any progress. Eventually I said forget it and made the setpoint tags for every tank (even tanks that are not relevant) and set unused tags to a value of -1. In the HMI I restricted numeric inputs 0-100 and configured the visibility of the object to be invisible when the setpoint is equal to -1.

This is a messy solution and I am not a fan of it, but this seems to be the best method given the tools Rockwell lets you work with. The inability to explicitly define data types for global object parameters is really frustrating and a major shortfall, one that has caught me out more than this time alone. If I had my druthers I'd be able to explicitly define global object parameter data types or have a robust non-VBA data type conversion implementation (like how VB/VBA has CStr and CDec and whatnot).

Thanks for the help, I appreciate it.