Crimson 3.0 Emulator PLC communication

[OkiePC]

Sound like what you are doing is like direct referencing with FTView. I have not done that, but I just did a quick check to see what you mean, and yes, there appears to be no way to reference the bit number when doing that.

I suggest using a flag tag for your button. You can identify the correct bit number in the tag data source.

 

[Tim James]

Figured it out. The reason I couldn't drag my tags into the display editor was simply because when C3 imported them from the .csv file it pulled them in with a space (example 'F8_19 BYPASS_OFF_SP'). That was why I was getting the 'unexpected identifier' error message. To work around that I was addressing items in my display pages without using the tags [PLC1.F008:0019] which works fine for the float data file but it wasn't working for the bit data file since it needs to identify the bit location. [PLC1.B003:0006] would not identify the bit location. So I took out the space in the name of all my tags and voila, I could drag and drop them into my display page definitions without an error. Now the reference addresses are properly formatted tags (i.e. TagsPLC1.B3_6_9JOGFAN) which have the correct bit locations stored in them. Now I just need to figure out the best way to keep those spaces from coming into C3 from my .csv file. Thanks for the help guys.

 

[OkiePC]

...Now I just need to figure out the best way to keep those spaces from coming into C3 from my .csv file.

One of these days I am going to have to write some VBA code for excel to do the conversion from PB32 to Crimson automatically and check for things like that.

 

[Tim James]

It seems that C3 is putting a space in between each field you select to be pulled in for the tag name. Looks like a simple excel macro to cut the contents of one cell and add it to the contents of another without adding spaces would do the trick. I could just use the logical address for the tag name, but I'd like to be able to have the description in there as well just to keep everything straight.

 

[OkiePC]

It seems that C3 is putting a space in between each field you select to be pulled in for the tag name. Looks like a simple excel macro to cut the contents of one cell and add it to the contents of another without adding spaces would do the trick. I could just use the logical address for the tag name, but I'd like to be able to have the description in there as well just to keep everything straight.

How did you generate the csv file in the first place? Did you import from RSLogix500?

 

[Tim James]

I exported the .csv from RSLogix500 under 'tools' 'database' 'ASCII export' with only address/symbol descriptions selected.

 

[OkiePC]

I have not used that tool in Crimson recently. When I did use it several revisions ago, I had a handful of issues too. More recently, I have been exporting to csv from PanelBuilder32, then massaging the results to fit the Crimson format. I have done this manually three times now, repeating the same steps each time. I think I have enough practice now and have seen a couple of "gotchas" that I could write a decent macro for it.

 

[Tim James]

Either PB32 or RSLogix will export all the necessary tag info, you just have to decide which one you want to work with. I just threw a little concatenation macro into my .csv file to merge some of the cell contents without spaces and then changed my column parameters in C3 to use only the second column for the tag name (still uses first column for establishing the tag address). Now my tags are titled with logical address and description with no spaces.

 

[OkiePC]

Thanks for that, Tim. I hadn't thought of exporting as RSLogix500 from PB32 then using the (new and improved) import utility in Crimson.

 

[GreatValue]

Attempt appending ".9" to access bit 9, e.g., [PLC1.B003:0006].9.

In my workings, I had attempted [PLC1.102,64,9,UINT32] & 0x0020, but this did not work, whereas, [PLC1.102,64,9,UINT32].9 did!

 

[GreatValue]

Figured it out. The reason I couldn't drag my tags into the display editor was simply because when C3 imported them from the .csv file it pulled them in with a space (example 'F8_19 BYPASS_OFF_SP'). That was why I was getting the 'unexpected identifier' error message. To work around that I was addressing items in my display pages without using the tags [PLC1.F008:0019] which works fine for the float data file but it wasn't working for the bit data file since it needs to identify the bit location. [PLC1.B003:0006] would not identify the bit location. So I took out the space in the name of all my tags and voila, I could drag and drop them into my display page definitions without an error. Now the reference addresses are properly formatted tags (i.e. TagsPLC1.B3_6_9JOGFAN) which have the correct bit locations stored in them. Now I just need to figure out the best way to keep those spaces from coming into C3 from my .csv file. Thanks for the help guys.

Attempt appending ".9" to access bit 9, e.g., [PLC1.B003:0006].9.

In my workings, I had attempted [PLC1.102,64,9,UINT32] & 0x0020, but this did not work, whereas, [PLC1.102,64,9,UINT32].9 did!