Wonderware Intouch HMI Merging Projects Help!

[Autonaut]

To start I have been a long-time lurker.. this is my first post. I have used the search function but have not come across something close to what I am looking for exactly.

I am not very familiar with Wonderware / Intouch HMI application development but have been getting better and better with time spent using the platform. However, there are a few things I need some help with.

Issue - I have been requested to merge 2 projects (1 in house with my group and another which is OEM vendor skid). The client wants to "Merge" the 2 projects for the operator console displays. I have developed a multi-monitor application with only a handful of screens and setup my redundant modbus connections. This application has been tested and is ready to deploy for the safety system.

I have not received the OEM skid project which from the screencaps I have seen is about 17 screens with a currently unknown tag count.

Can someone provide some insight on the best practices to approach this for efficiency? Can a single tag database have multiple tags with the same address if they belong to separate groups/access names? If more information is required to help please let me know trying to game plan how I should approach this.

 

[Saffa]

This will be a bit tricky to pull off without it looking like a Frankenstein, especially if the styles of the two projects are quite different.

But yes, you can have two tags pointing at the and address, either with the same topic or different. What you can't have is the same tagname; that must always be unique.

I haven't used "Classic" Intouch in some time now but when merging work back in the day, we'd pick the project which was going the be the master, then export the tag DB from the other project and import into the master. There is a utility called DBDump and DBLoad for this, should be in the Intouch application folder or on the installation media. From memory there's the first line of the exported DB to edit in a text editor, to change the import behavior if it finds a duplicate tag. I would normally set it to Rename, then go through the import logs and go look at all those tags that got renamed and figure out what i actually want to happen.

After that you can export and import your windows. There is a trick here with "placeholder" tags as well, but i can't remember what needed doing... the help file will explain the process.

After that you've got scripts to export and import, and the might be it.

As with anything like this... make multiple backups first.