RSL5000 I/O config naming conventions

[wildswing]

Another question in my continuing saga of putting together our first CLX system from scratch in-house...

What conventions/standards do you use when you name your IO modules in your IO config?

A couple of OEM installations we have here name their modules by physical location, for instance...

H05_CC6_A10 is...
- a 1794-ACN adapter
- in control cabinet 6
- IO rack/chassis A10
- they then add _## for slot number to identify modules in that chassis, i.e. H05_CC6_A10_01 is an input card in slot 1

Another example (same vender, different machine)...

F11_PLC100 is...
- a 1794-ACN
- in field cabinet 11
- fist node of IO chassis 100 within that cabinet. There's a second F11_110. The last number identifies 100 = inputs, 110 = outputs.
- input module in slot 1 is F11_PLC101, second is _PLC102...

Having a clean slate, I'd prefer not to do it a certain way just because one of our OEM venders does it that way. I'd like to hear from others. Please tell me how you do it and why.

 

[OkiePC]

I have only one logix design where I got to chose number schemes and it was my first experience with Controllogix.

For wire numbers of real I/O, I started each number with I or O (input or output) followed by:
Rrr-ss-pp
where rr was the physical chassis number (rack), ss was the slot number and pp was the point number.

So as an example:

IR02-11-04

Would be in chassis two, slot eleven point four.

OR00-01-15 would be an output in chassis zero, slot one, bit fifteen.

I only had 3 physical chassis in my case all in the same panel, but I put the R and leading 0 in there to keep people familiar with PLC5 and SLC addressing from thinking that it was a slot number.

It was just something I came up with quickly that worked and I am sure there are better methods, it's just food for thought.

 

[wildswing]

That's kind of what I'm aiming for too. Some kind of scheme that takes me from big to small, like panel # down to the IO module and point.

Something I want to try to do is to make the base tag (shown under any alias) mean something, like physical location as mentioned above.

For example, from the project I'm monkeying with now, I've named my Point I/O adapter P01C00 (Panel 01, Chassis 00). Now the tags generated when I add IO modules look like P01C00:1:I.Ch0Data (slot 1, input, channel 0), P01C00:17:O.Ch0Data (slot 17, output, channel 0), etc. I may remove the "C" and replace with an underscore or an "R" for rack.

I then plan to create tag arrays who's names reflect the physical location as well. Hardware IO tags will be copied to them first and last to make the tags synchronous. Tags who's names reflect the actual devices will then be aliases for those and used in the ladder.

Am I on the right track? With the flexibility to call things anything you want, you could drive yourself nuts trying to come up with the perfect scheme.

 

[bce123]

Mark, you may want to look at this post as well as others on this site:
http://www.plctalk.net/qanda/showthread.php?t=67012

 

[wildswing]

Thanks for the link bce123. Good read.

I think the light at the end of the tunnel is no longer an oncoming train!