Red Lion Crimson 3.1 - Can't delete communication tag names

[Tanquen]

In the Communications > Network > Protocol 1 - AB Tag Names > PLC10 configuration page there is a Tag Names section (not the same as the separate Data Tags tab) and it has Manage, Import and Export buttons. Manage shows the same popup you get when you click on the "Pick..." button on a Data Tags Source. There is only an option to Create what it also calls tags. I see no way to delete them.

I did see that if you export the Tag Names and remove the lines for the tags you want to delete from the text file they will be deleted from the application BUT it reorders the internal pointers so Data Tags now have the wrong tag name.

Even if you go through the Data Tags and fix the source for the ones that changed, the ones that did not change still will not read that address from the PLC. The only way to get them to work again was to change all the Data Tags sources to something else and then back.

 

[C McAlpine]

I've never successfully deleted tags out of that menu, however you can rename them by pressing F2 to something useful to you? or a valid tag if that's the issue.

Also have you tried re-compiling the database to remove the error of it not reading the existing functional tags?

 

[C McAlpine]

I just did some testing in one of my projects.

Shift+Delete will delete your tag in that manage window.

 

[Tanquen]

Thanks, that works.

Why do they hide it like that? The help button on that screen don't work and I could not find anything in the manual and its hard to even search because most everything comes up about working with Data Tags not the communication tags.

Data Tags get a right click menu and the delete key just works but in the Tag Names manager you get a broken help button and you have to use Shift+Delete. ???

Do I need to recompile after deleting or renaming for the Data Tags to still work?

 

[OkiePC]

Thanks, that works.

Why do they hide it like that? The help button on that screen don't work and I could not find anything in the manual and its hard to even search because most everything comes up about working with Data Tags not the communication tags.

Data Tags get a right click menu and the delete key just works but in the Tag Names manager you get a broken help button and you have to use Shift+Delete. ???

Do I need to recompile after deleting or renaming for the Data Tags to still work?

I don't think the tags listed in the management page for the L5K drivers have any impact on the performance of the application that is used in the HMI unless you are referencing them in tags or expressions, so pruning them for performance reasons shouldn't be necessary.

Pruning them to get rid of clutter makes sense and Red Lion is notorious for being very sparse with their documentation. I appreciate the fact that they don't overwhelm us with literature, but a happy medium somewhere between zilch and Rockwell would be better imhoo.

I remember doing an application with a large Controllogix application and having the whole L5K file was hard to wade through, so I imported it into a blank new Studio5K project and deleted everything I wouldn't need in the HMI and exported it as another L5K file for use with Crimson. I didn't even think to try shift+delete.

Red Lion has (relatively) recently updated that driver and added a newer instance of it, so within 5 years, some 2 page white papers skimming over some of the critical details can be expected.