Crimson - Enhanced Analog Indicator. How the 7734 do I...

[TConnolly]

Does anyone have any ideas on how to build this in Crimson?

The analog scale with a moving indicator and PV data is easy. What I'm having trouble with is creating a shaded band that consists of SP + tolerance. For example, if SP was 65 and tolerance was +/-5 then the zone between 60 and 70 is shaded. The shaded section sit behind the scale but it needs to be dynamic. Both SP and tolerance are set by the operator. I've done this in RSView/FTView with overlapping rectangles with fill animation and Ignition has a built in for it. The problem is the Crimson rectangles are not transparent, so overlapping them doesn't work (see the two adjacent partly overlapped rectangles with fill)

Any ideas?

 

[OkiePC]

How about a single fill from top rectangle with 2-d animation? The vertical position would be calculated as the setpoint-span/2. The span would be recalculated as the fill amount. Then both could then be dynamic. I was going to try to make an example, but my desktop died and my 64bit notebook won't run the emulator to test...I was also going to see what would happen if you set the motion limits to match the scale (inverting them too) to further simplify the position math.

EDIT: Since they enter the tolerance then it's just setpoint-tolerance, and fill amount or span=2*tolerance...

In Crimson, for transparency in images, the only format I know works is .png

I don't know about you, but I like to have tolerance lines across the chart which can be broken or bright colored lines with 2-d animation shifting them when either the setpoint or tolerance was altered. In both cases you are only animating the vertical and you can deal in pixels or percents or other...

 

[TConnolly]

I did consider using a single fill rectangle and using motion animation to adjust its position. However if I want to adapt that scheme to show a wide tolerance then I have to have enough space above the enhanced analog display for the filled rectangle. Maybe tolerance lines are the way to go instead of a shaded area.

I'm redoing a screen for an effluent clarifier that was originally done by someone else, the main screen is basically the entire P&ID stuffed onto a single G306 screen, which as you can imagine is almost unusable. The operators tending it are minimally skilled and barely grasp the system as it is. Four enhanced analog indicators and five multi-state indicators on a screen using ASM concepts will tell them everything they need to know without all the clutter.

 

[OkiePC]

I did consider using a single fill rectangle and using motion animation to adjust its position. However if I want to adapt that scheme to show a wide tolerance then I have to have enough space above the enhanced analog display for the filled rectangle.

You could truncate the block easily enough to limit it to the area of the scale...

Maybe tolerance lines are the way to go instead of a shaded area.

Adding two pens that are the limits is the way I like to do it... I bet the operators would go for that too.

I'm redoing a screen for an effluent clarifier that was originally done by someone else, the main screen is basically the entire P&ID stuffed onto a single G306 screen, which as you can imagine is almost unusable. The operators tending it are minimally skilled and barely grasp the system as it is. Four enhanced analog indicators and five multi-state indicators on a screen using ASM concepts will tell them everything they need to know without all the clutter.

Yikes that is still crowded, but there is a lot to be said for being able to stay on one page.

 

[TConnolly]

Revised solution

I am updating this topic for reference and to share my solution with anyone else who may try to do the same thing.

I changed up how I was doing the indicator so that instead of shading the area what was in tolerance, I used two filled rectangles to shade the area that was out of tolerance, which I suppose is more inline with ASM principles anyways. So there are two rectangles behind the analog scale, the lower rectangle fills upwards, the upper rectangle fills downwards. The screen shot I took is of a cooling tower project that I did some time ago as the status display would be a little simpler to experiment with than the crowded screen of the effluent clarifier. In the case of the enhanced analog indicator for the water temperature shown, the indicator adjusts so that the setpoint (73°) is always in the middle, and the scale automatically adjusts to show setpoint +/- 15°. The fill percentage for the rectangles to shade the out of tolerance zone is then set with an expression. This way I didn't have to worry about the rectangles overlapping and blocking each other.

I did run into a Crimson bug with the vertical scale indicator leaving a visible shadow when refreshing the numbers when the scale changed, but Redlion tech support was responsive as usual and found a work around that involved just placing a plain rectangle primitive that matched the screen background behind the scale, I suspect it just hides the shadow background, so keep that in mind if you ever run into the same thing.