RSLogix5000 Prioduced/Consumed Tags

[MartB]

Here's my situation:
We have two PLC's exchanging produced and consumed tags.
We would like to change these to messages rather than just broadcast tags across a plant wide network. All of our other machines use messages.

Before I go making wholesale changes I'd like to identify all of the produced and consumed tags on these PLC's.
I've tried sorting through the tag list but I still can't see a way to sort out which are the produced and consumed tags?

Any ideas?

 

[dwilson]

Ha! Something I know, for once...

Go to the Logic tab, and look for Produced tags. This will give you a list of the tags that are Multi-cast (as in, transmitted, similar to broadcast) by THAT program. It DOES NOT tell you which Multicast-ed INCOMING tags (from other processor(s)), are expected by THIS program on the link.

The original programmer may have been nice enough to tag/comment as such (it could happen).

These packets are on transmitted on an IP address other than the official IP address of the processor.

If you get a copy of WireShark (free IT application), you can sniff the traffic to verify. You will need a managed-type switch to do packet sniffing.

A Low end managed switch (Linksys/Cisco < $200) will also allow you to corral these noisy packets to the sub-segment of your network running these PLCs (running here as we speak). It may be easier than re-writing your entire program, especially if there are more than 2 PLCs involved. You would otherwise need an explicit message for each tag or tag group for each connection. It ramps exponentially. Normal traffic (programming, SCADA, etc. ) passes transparently.

Rockwell Tech support has not been helpful in these matters.

L8R

/DW

 

[daba]

Depends on what version of RSLogix5000 you are running.

In Vers. 20 : above the tags window, use the drop-dowm menu in the "Show" box, choose "Configure", then in the "Filter On" drop-down in the Tag Filter dialog choose "Produced" and "Consumed" to see those tags only.

Previous versions were similar....

 

[MartB]

As luck would have it, I'm using version 20 :nodi:

Thanks for the tip Daba, I never realized I could search for them that way. Made my life much easier

 

[daba]

As luck would have it, I'm using version 20 :nodi:

Thanks for the tip Daba, I never realized I could search for them that way. Made my life much easier

No problem....

I'm curious as to why you need/want to replace the Prod/Cons tags with messaging..?

And please remember that your filtering is persistant, so always check the tag "Show" properties when you can't see a tag in the database that you know is there. I generally clear the filters after i've used them, but i've been (temporarily) caught out a few times... embarrassing when teaching this stuff