Ignition or FactoryTalk

[TheWaterboy]

I wish Rockwell had that plan... new blood would do them a world of good.

No argument there.

 

[chelton]

Not related to client/server system, however just venting my hates with FT, that many smaller HMI/Scada systems support etc

• 
  Hex numbers not supported ( can't use in comparisons etc)
  Handling of pop-ups ( can't make pop-ups stay on top etc)
  Parameter passing to displays ( very limited on what you can pass )
  Touch events ( no support for left click right click double touch)
  

 

[JaxGTO]

I have been using FTView since it was Advisor PC, Did an Ignition job recently that was very intensive with SQL and having to read the history SQL tables. Unfortunately the customer had setup to use create new SQL table name each month (If your going to query them, use the single file option), so I had to build in sifting through the correct tables to all of my queries.


We also needed to put in a script that would set the date and time in the PLC at 1AM everyday. The way you access the PLC tags for server side scripting is very different than from the screen usage. No good examples on how to do that, but tech support did help.


Other than that, Ignition was an easy experience.

 

[harryting]

When Ignition first came out, I played with it but couldn't get my company at the time to fund me for a plant wide SCADA project. Now I just got a small project with Ignition Edge Panel.

I got tons of really basic question that's almost embarrassing to ask... one thing that already annoy me a bit is it no longer can export tag in CSV format but CSV is the best way to edit a lot of tags instead of XML.

 

[Jlandwerlen]

...no longer can export tag in CSV format but CSV is the best way to edit a lot of tags instead of XML.

You can't export, but you can import CSV. CSV may be the easiest way to edit, but it is not the best as you lose a lot of functionality (think alarms). If XML or JSON is not doable external, you can still use CSV or Excel. Instead of importing, use a script, read Excel and create tags based on cell data.

Ignition doesn't put you in a box like FT does, so you have many options. Don't be afraid to post these questions on the Ignition forum.

 

[ASF]

I have exported tags to XML and edited with Notepad ++ a few times to do bulk tag creation. But honestly, the built-in tools for tag creation in Ignition are so good that once you have your environment set up well, I've never really needed to do it. I can do it just as fast with the built in multi instance wizards and UDT structures.

And as mentioned above, the Ignition forum is super helpful. The developers are active on there and often respond to user questions and suggestions. You don't get THAT with FTView.

 

[rtgibson]

Probably a bit late to the party but I'd agree with the fella (JaxGTO) above that one of the things I didn't like about Ignition was the SQL handling side of things and the fact that history data is split across multiple tables until you figure out how to get it to just dump everything in one table also the time stamping in UTC took some figuring out when trying to query data back out of those tables for other non-Ignition systems. So I like FT View better for it's handling of SQL stuff - I guess also though because I'm a VBA guy and had to start getting into Python for the Ignition scripting. That being said I do like Ignition - not knocking it there's just pro's and con's to each.

Isn't the FactoryTalk ThinManager system supposed to handle all of the stuff regarding accessing certain screens in defined zones in your factory - for instance as you walk around with a tablet it changes what screens are available as you go from zone to zone - pretty sure I've seen that and had it demo'd at the TechConnect events.

What did come across as really really good was the free support and forum community for Ignition - amazingly helpful in getting my first Ignition project underway and free....did I mention FREE !

 

[Jlandwerlen]

Probably a bit late to the party but I'd agree with the fella (JaxGTO) above that one of the things I didn't like about Ignition was the SQL handling side of things and the fact that history data is split across multiple tables..

How Ignition handles SQL is probably one of the best things about the software. Ignition and SQL is so easy.

Now, there is a love/hate relationship with tag historian (which is SQL based). By default, history is partitioned by month. You can change this, or simply turn it off and use one table. If you let Ignition query tag history it handles the table boundaries for you. If you want to use SQL queries to grab history, then yes, you will need to handle that yourself... but it isn't hard to do.

It probably comes down to the proper use case(s), use tag history if you are going to use tag history queries. Use transaction groups if you want to use SQL queries. Maybe oversimplifying, but that is a good place to start.

 

[harryting]

Does ignition REQUIRE a SQL DB like when they first came out? I went through much of the Inductive University stuff but I missed that. It seems SQL is only needed for history but not for tag database anymore.

 

[Jlandwerlen]

Ignition doesn't require a SQL connection, unless you want to use historian or use transaction groups. Not to be silly, but you need a SQL database whenever you want to use SQL.

Tags will work without a SQL connection. Be aware though, without SQL or some other means to get data, trends will be very boring. You could potentially store some data in tags (datasets) and then use that for trends (I don't recommend it). The tag history module is so cheap it's not worth trying to reinvent the wheel on things IMO.

 

[harryting]

Ok, that sound good. So it is quite a different than the first edition of Ignition I tried decades ago.

This project is the Edge edition so only one week of data. We got OSI PI for process history but it would be nice to have a "current trend" too.

 

[cardosocea]

Isn't the FactoryTalk ThinManager system supposed to handle all of the stuff regarding accessing certain screens in defined zones in your factory - for instance as you walk around with a tablet it changes what screens are available as you go from zone to zone - pretty sure I've seen that and had it demo'd at the TechConnect events.

From what I've seen so far of ThinManager (I have it at my plant), not a chance that it's smart enough to detect this.

 

[diat150]

When Ignition first came out, I played with it but couldn't get my company at the time to fund me for a plant wide SCADA project. Now I just got a small project with Ignition Edge Panel.

I got tons of really basic question that's almost embarrassing to ask... one thing that already annoy me a bit is it no longer can export tag in CSV format but CSV is the best way to edit a lot of tags instead of XML.

spend some time and get used to the scripting functions to edit and create tags. I built screens to do this for me and can create thousands and thousands of tags in minutes. This is honestly my favorite feature of ignition. just a few minutes ago I wrote about a 5-6 line script to run thru all of my devices and create a new tag if an existing tag for that device exists. I then slightly modified the script to delete a tag I had a typo on. Very easy to do and way way way easier to handle than using a csv file.

 

[ASF]

Does ignition REQUIRE a SQL DB like when they first came out? I went through much of the Inductive University stuff but I missed that. It seems SQL is only needed for history but not for tag database anymore.

I have seen (but not investigated any further) an "internal" tag history option. I've always had SQL databases available and not had to concern myself further, but it looks like there's an option for doing tag history without a database now. I'm sure it has some limitations on tag count and/or data retention time, but if it's doing what I think it's doing it'd be perfect for a small system.

 

[cardosocea]

Would installing SQLite be a big deal to get a database functionality?