No offense but Inductive Automations Ignition software is riddled with bugs. I just found three more a few weeks ago
And they have no CTRL-ALT-DEL or Alt-F4 lock outs so operators
can drop the system. It has no symbols, you must purchase the symbol factory to get any animated objects. We also just yanked a system out of a water treatment plant because the Java environment would keep crashing the OS.
Also when developing the animated graphics they animate even in development mode, so if you have an animation that makes an object invisible, guess what, it is now invisible until the tag turns it visible, what a hassle.
We installed iFix and they are much happier.
No offense taken, everyone will have a preference. All SCADA products have bugs. I have ran into them with Wonderware and Rockwell products and understand they occur with Ignition too. At least with Ignition bug fixes are usually a quicker fix and less risky to update the software then say tying to update System Platform or FTView SE on a running plant. My code that I write will have bugs in it at times, so I can't assume software that I use won't have bugs too.
CTRL-ALT-DEL, /ALF-F4 lockouts could be a feature request I'm sure. Depending on what else is on the client computer it's debatable if those functions are even needed. So an operator closes it? They can re-open it. So they do CTRL-ALT-DEL, so they power off the computer. They can recover w/o issue.
As for the animation, I prefer how Ignition handles it, especially if you get into screens/windows that layer everything. Much easier to identify the layers and see the functionality than seeing it all and trying to move the layers around to access what you want to change and align it all back up. Easy enough to toggle the visibility property if you need to see it during development. However, I typically use the enable property so the object is always visible and you know the functionality is there. So I consider that a designer preference and not a product flaw.
You pay for Symbol Factory on every SCADA product. They license it and charge for it. With Ignition you have the option not to purchase it. The others include it, and you did pay for it even if it isn't a line item on the invoice.
Can't comment on the Java/OS crashing.
Because of our heavy usage of databases in the SCADA system, Ignition just makes life easier. I don't miss ODBC connections and constant scripting in the SCADA to insert/retrieve data from a DB.
Glad you're happy with iFix and respect your position on IA. If iFix makes you money, great. If FTView SE makes you money, great. If AdvancedHMI makes you money, that's great too.