Allen Bradley Factory Talk

[Tonk]

Gotta say this is one of the Useless pieces of software i have ever used shame on you Rockwell!! Got to say even Automation Direct C-More is better. I use Siemens or Mitsubishi HMI's and they are light year ahead of Allen Bradley's pieces of **** plus they cost half the price and will comfortably communicate to alternative platforms!!! Shame on you Rockwell!!! Get with the rest of the world at half the price!!!!

 

[parky]

Yep, FTV etc. is just a re-hash of their old RSView32, looks almost identical, but RSV32 is quite old now, it seems they have reduced functionallity & charging way more for it.
In 2003, we had about 50% AB stuff, after spending over 50k on one project their support was abismal, from that point on we dumpeed them in favour of Siemens & Mitsubishi. we actually replaced most of the AB stuff with Mitsubishi to keep the amount of spares down, seemed far more reliable, good service & at a lower cost, unfortunately many manufacturers seem to be jumping on the bandwagon i.e. proliferation of new versions at a stiffling cost, i.e. upgrade at higher costs, must have tech connect or they do not want to know.

 

[glennz]

What specifically Rockwell-related are we griping about this time?

I'm thoroughly disappointed in the PanelView 5000 series and am trying to steer our ship in a different direction (looking for suggestions).

They are all bad...some worse than others. You think it's bad now you should have been around in the late 90s and early 2000s. Oy veh...

But then again, Rockwell software is my bread-n-butter so happy to take on all the projects everyone else shuns.

 

[cardosocea]

Gotta say this is one of the Useless pieces of software i have ever used shame on you Rockwell!!

I take it you never used iFix... I'd kill to be able to use FTView instead of it now.

 

[tlf30]

I take it you never used iFix... I'd kill to be able to use FTView instead of it now.

LOL, yep. Anyone that has used iFIX knows what pain is. Any let me tell you, iFIX is anything but cheap!

We always called it "uFIX, iBROKE"

 

[JaxGTO]

Except for some of the clunky way it references tagnames in scripts, I am really starting to like Ignition.

 

[BachPhi]

Having a bad day?

 

[J_ouellet]

instead of just "spitting venom", why don't you explain what you're struggling with, and maybe we can help !

I've been using Rockwell's product for many years, and personally, I find them less PITA than most competitor !

I guess at some point, you get to understand their "thinking" and it start to somehow make sense, but every manufacturer has it's pros/cons...

Whenever I have to play with Schneider, I keep looking at the calendar, and start counting the months before retirement !!

 

[arpus4KM]

Working with factorytalk view, and panelbuilder 32, and panelbuilder 1400/1200, and Ignition, and Cmore, and Maple systems, and Omron, and any number of other HMI software.


Not a single one is the best at something.... but FTview is not as bad as people say. The constant griping about how so horrendous it is because it doesn't have *Whizbang32* function, or that it's too WYSIWYG, and there isn't enough background capability and functionality.

I feel like the people who make these complaints haven't done more than linking some tags to objects and wondering why they can't click and drag something and have the computer read their mind on what they want.


It's not the hardest to use, and it's not the easiest to use and has a lot more functionality than some other HMI software that people praise to the moon.


Whenever I hear these things I think back to the last time I used Sysmac Studio to build an NA HMI... I couldn't stand that software and the problems it had. Imagine if you will, you set an indicator to a tag and the tag defaults as DINT instead of BOOL and you don't notice it. well with the Sysmac Studio software it will cause a build problem and won't allow you to download the program to the HMI, and it won't even tell you where or what the problem is with. Of course with FTview you mess a tag up and it will just gray out with no information coming in, but it doesn't mess with you and prevent you from downloading it just because there's a problem with a tag. This is the kind of stuff people conveniently forget about when they say Rockwell sucks and they wish everything was Omron, or Auomation direct, or XYZ brand that isn't Rockwell.

 

[alive15]

IMO, all software sucks until you overcome the learning curve. Once you get better working with one company, other companies software should eventually become more intuitive to work on. Unfortunately we all have to get over that hump first.

 

[Steve Bailey]

IMO, all software sucks until you overcome the learning curve. Once you get better working with one company, other companies software should eventually become more intuitive to work on. Unfortunately we all have to get over that hump first.

And in addition, we have to overcome our tendency to try to make the new company's software behave like the software we're already familiar with.

 

[IO_Rack]

And in addition, we have to overcome our tendency to try to make the new company's software behave like the software we're already familiar with.

I chuckled at this a bit as I recall hitting Omron short cut keys on Rockwell software.... more often than I'd like to admit. Usually followed with short cuss word at myself.

 

[OkiePC]

My advice for hardware based HMI, toss the A/B in a pond and buy a Red Lion. Crimson 3.x runs circles around FactoryBalk. It's like switching from Atari to Playstation.

For PC based HMI, I like Ignition. There's a big learning curve, but it is very powerful with great support.