How to program rsview32 ebook

However, at runtime when RSView is actually running in a live plant environment , you will probably disable this, as it allows more access than the operators need. This will compensate for minor hardware variations and make sure that the screen will resize to fill the monitor. In total, you will get:. You can use this format over and over again on projects of your own. This ebook is the result of many years of experience in PLC programming, electrical design and engineering.

It summarizes dozens of techniques that are needed to write a solid RSView32 application:. The Project Scope or Functional Specification, or whatever your company might call it defines in detail how the system is to operate when the project is finished. I was creating screens in just a couple of hours. Tom Witherell Instrument Tech About the author Neal Babcock is an Electrical Engineer and has written and maintained dozens of PLC programs used in the semiconductor, automotive, energy and aviation industries.

Our Returns Policy Within 14 days of receipt of your download, you may return any of the items you purchased from Engineer and Technician, for any reason, for a full refund. Available for instant download. Category: Ebooks. If you to want to take the quick path to learning RSView32, this training manual is for you. And, you can begin right now. The Project The best way to learn a new language or piece of software is by looking at a real world example.

Set the field length to 4. Create a black rectangle, as is shown in the scope. Change the font color of the numeric display to red and center in the rectangle. Adjust the font size as necessary. Use the smaller set at the bottom of the graphic. Place the pipes as necessary. You may have to change the length, but dont try to get the pipes to mate up exactly with the other elements.

It goes much more quickly if you leave the pipes a bit long and simply send them to the back, behind the element to which you are connecting. The final decision on how the elements look is, of course, up to the client or your supervisor. It was stretched to fit and then a bitmap was created. It helps to segregate the control buttons, and give the operator a sense that he is using a traditional pushbutton station.

RSView lets you simulate, to a point, what the display will look like at runtime. Click the Test Run button and the display looks like this. As you can see, there are a number of graphic elements that are shown improperly, or not shown at all.

If we had a PLC connected, and these elements were still shown incorrectly, we would know that these elements have some sort of problem associated with them. Perhaps an element is associated with a tag that is improperly addressed in the PLC. At any rate, each of these elements would need to be investigated to find the problem.

In a case where there are many problems and we know that we should be communicating with a PLC, the first place we would check is the primary configuration to make sure we have any connection at all with the PLC. This test mode is handy for checking the navigation buttons. Click the Normal button to return to the normal editing mode. Review of the System View Display Now it is a good time to get some feedback from the client. It is a good idea to create a mock-up showing the system in normal operation, and another mockup showing what the system looks like when there is an alarm.

This helps people to easily visualize how the screens will change. If you dont have access to the PLC, which would allow you to show the different conditions, then create a copy of your System View display. Save this display as System View Review Normal.

Save another as System View Review Alarm. Do what you have to do to create a mock-up, such as deleting the date and time numeric displays and creating a mock time and date using plain text. Put the valves and motors in a state that is reasonable. All you need are screenshots to print and present to the client. In reality, this would be the first step you would take in a project, especially if you did not have a sample screen supplied with your scope.

For the purpose of this book and learning how to program RSView, however, making a mock-up first seemed counterproductive and would have probably been confusing. Remember, as you work with RSView in the real world, do not to go very far in your design before you have official approval. At this point, if your client or supervisor decides that they dont like the looks of your valve icon, for example, it would take a fair amount of time to replace all of those.

Configuring the Menu After your client, customer or supervisor approves of the mock-ups, work can begin on the other displays. First, however, we will configure the display menu. To be efficient, we want to do this just once. There are a couple of ways to do this. First, lets look at the foolproof, guided method. Save this display as Valve Fault Time Delays. Save this display as Maintenance. Save this display as Alarms.

Save this display as Batch Log. Now we have files for all of the displays we will have in our system. This is necessary to complete the configuration for the menu using the guided method. Close the Batch Log display and open System View.

Right-click on the System View button and choose Edit Button. After the button configuration window appears, click on the Action tab. Now you might notice that all we really had to do was type Display System View to configure the press action. Use whichever method you like to compete the menu configuration. Screen 2 - Agitator Process Run Time Display The scope says that the agitator process run time is adjustable from 60 seconds to seconds.

Open the Agitator Process Run Time display. Clean off all of the graphics that applied to the system view so that the display looks like this. Click on the Numeric Input button on the toolbar. Draw a rectangle on the display. When you release the mouse, the Numeric Input window appears. Click on the dotted button beside the Tag Name field. This is the preset value of the agitator run time timer. This is the value, in seconds, that determines how long the agitator runs.

Change the field length to 3, as seconds is the maximum time allows. Center justification will work best for this field. Click OK.

We need to make sure that the operator can only enter values from 60 seconds to seconds. This is called range limiting. In the Project window, click on System, then on Tag Database. Make sure that the Minimum field is 60, and that the Maximum field is At runtime, if the operator were to try to enter a number outside of that range, RSView would not accept it and the previously entered value would be maintained.

Close the Tag Database window. To save some time and maintain consistency, copy the numeric input field and the associated text from the Agitator Process Run Time display.

Copy the numeric display so that there are a total of 4 fields. Arrange them in a table to your liking. It might look something like this. Right-click on the numeric input field for the city water valve.

Click on the button to see a list of the tags. There is no tag that exists for the city water valve fault time delay, so we will create one. The timer for the city water valve fault is T We want to access and alter the PRE value of the timer. In a similar manner, create the tags for the preset values of the remaining timers. At runtime, the current values of the timers preset value will be shown.

The operator may change the value in a range anywhere from 1 second to 10 seconds. Change the text appropriately so that the table looks like this. Click on the numeric display button and draw a rectangle in the square to the right in the QR Pump row. The Numeric Display window appears. We have not defined the tags for the motor runtime hours, so click on the Tags button, and then the New Tag button.

Counters are used to keep track of the total run times of the motors. The actual hours are stored in the accumulated ACC register of the respective counter.

Draw a rectangle that fills the screen as much as possible without overlapping any existing graphic elements. Right-click on the alarm summary area. The top menu in RSView has changed to accommodate editing the alarm summary.

The text in the boxes above the line represents the field titles that will be shown at runtime. You can change them to read whatever you would like.

You can also set the width of each field. You can also specify which buttons appear in the button bar. Ack means that the alarm will be acknowledged when the button is pressed. To silence the alarm means that the alarm sound made by the computer will be silenced. Execute and identify have to do with macros; we have no use for those here. Filter and sort allow the operator to display only certain alarms, or allow the alarms to be sorted by any field. The Setup tab shown below allows you to set the path for the log file, among other things.

Be aware that these files can grow very large over time. They have been known to fill a hard drive, which of course causes other problems. Configuring a Tag to Trigger an Alarm The last things we need to do are select and configure the tags we want to include in our alarm list.

Under Alarm Type, we can select the alarm to trigger when the tag turns on, off, changes, changes to on or changes to off. The changes types differ from a normal on or off in that these are considered out-of-alarm immediately after the change of state.

For our purposes, we can simply leave the default setting as they are. If you ever need to reconfigure the alarm parameters for a given tag, just click on the Alarms button.

Configure the alarm parameters for the following tags, as listed in the scope. Screen 6 - Batch Log display The scope says that the completion date and time of each batch is recorded. The first thing we have to do it setup our data log. After this window opens, type Batch Log in the description. Use the Path tab to set the path to your log file.

Click on the File Management tab. We want only one file, so choose Never under the Start New Files section. Click on the Log Triggers tab. Select the On Change option, since we want the system to record every time our chosen tags change state.

Select the Tag in Model tab. Click on the button to the right of the Tag s to Add field. Individually select the BatchStart and BatchComplete tags. Click the Add button so that your screen looks like this. Click OK and save the file. We are going to take a shortcut here. However, during development, you may not have that option. We will use a file that was created in another project and modified in Excel to make it match our current batching project. Open the Batch Log display. Click on the OLE button.

Click and drag until you get a window that is as large as possible. When you release the mouse button, this screen appears. Click on Create from File and navigate to the file you want to use. In our case, this is the end result. There is no doubt that it will take some tweaking to get it to work properly in a real world situation. Finishing Touches We still have some configuration changes to make so that RSView will start properly.

In the Project window, open the System folder. The Preferences tab provides a number of options revolving around how many standard Windows features will be shown when RSView starts. Typically, since most applications are on a factory floor with minimum security, nearly all of the features are disabled, as shown above.

Title Bar Check this box to display the name of the application in the title bar at the top of the window. This usually isnt very important and just consumes real estate on the screen.

Menu Check this box to display the system menu at the top of the RSView32 window at runtime. If this is disabled check box is cleared , the Maximize Button option in the Display Settings - Properties tab is grayed out. In our application, there is no need for this. Activity Bar Check this box to display the activity bar at the bottom of the screen.

Again, in our application, this is not necessary. Minimize Button Check this box to display a minimize button in the top right hand corner of the window. Maximize Button Check this box to display a maximize button in the top right corner of the window. Control Box Check this box to display a control menu box in the upper left corner of the window. When this button is clicked it displays the control menu that allows the user to manipulate the window.

We dont want to give the operators access to this. Project Manager Check this box if you want the Project Manager to be displayed at runtime. It is important to remember that if the Project Manager box is not checked, you can press Ctrl-Alt-P to toggle the Project Manager at runtime if you have not disabled the key sequence. Under some conditions, this is the only way to open the Project Manager window.

It may the only way you can edit the displays or the program configuration. Switch to other Apps Checking this box will prevent users from switching to another application. Set the parameters as shown for our project. The Initial Graphic field determines which graphic will appear when RSView first starts with runtime.

Then, add the shortcut to your Windows startup folder. Trending RSView provides a lot of flexibility with its trends. You can set up a trend in just about any way you would like. There is a very elaborate trend available in the Trends display of RSViews library. This trend has three variables, with the actual values shown in the box just below the graph.

As you might expect, the red value corresponds with the red line, the green value with the green line and yellow with yellow. The unique part of this graph is the array of buttons and arrows below and to the right of the graph. The example above shows that the trend is graphing seconds, minutes and hours of the system clock. We could add any tag we like, whether analog or digital.

Colors, scales and times frames can all be adjusted. Trends, though, tend to consume a fair amount of computer memory, and may affect the performance of your system. Copy and Paste First When you need a new piece of text, or a new graphic such as a rectangle, look to see if you can copy an existing object. It is almost always much faster to copy something and then change it to make it what you need, as opposed to going to the toolbar and starting from scratch.

Sometimes, there can be a lag of 2 or 3 seconds. Formulas can be included in expressions For example, we could animate the color of the text in the Scales display of our System View graphic.

Put this expression in the Color section of the Animation window. Expressions can use logical operators, arithmetic operator and a variety of functions.

To Reposition An Object Click the object to select it. Use the Arrow keys to move the object to its new position: Press an Arrow key to move the object and cursor 1 pixel in the specified direction. Press Shift-Arrow key to move the object 10 pixels in the specified direction. Press Ctrl-Arrow key to move the object 50 pixels in the specified direction. Grab a corner of the object. Hold down Shift and the left mouse button as you drag the handle. When the object is the desired size, release the left mouse button and then release Shift.

Grab a handle then press and hold Ctrl. Hold down Ctrl and the left mouse button as you drag the handle. When the object is the correct shape and size, release the mouse button and then release Ctrl. If the steps shown below are followed, then an RSView program can be completed with maximum accuracy and minimum cost. Of course, the real world will throw curveballs and changes to you. As a result, you will have to go back and re-work certain aspects of your design.

Ideally, though, this is how things should work: 1. Get a clear and concise scope that defines the project in as much detail as necessary. If the scope is not clear, write emails and document any clarifications or changes to the scope. Understand the scope fully.

Get your head inside the process that you will be representing with RSView. Make sure that the PLC program is finished and that all necessary tags have been defined by the programmer. Create mock-ups of your screens and get client or supervisor approval before you do any real programming or configuration. Test your navigation on your co-workers.

Humbly accept their input and make any changes necessary. Test your design on the actual PLC that will be used in the project before you take it into the field. I wish you the best of luck in your endeavors. Open navigation menu. Close suggestions Search Search. User Settings. Skip carousel. Carousel Previous. Carousel Next. What is Scribd? Explore Ebooks. Bestsellers Editors' Picks All Ebooks.

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Search inside document. C means that it references an internal Counter file C means that it uses the first counter in the table How to Program RSView32 Copyright Modern Media engineersandtechnicians. Overview 3. Step 1 City Water 7. Step 3 Ingredient KM 7. Step 4 Mixing 7. Step 5 Pump to filling lines 7.

Colors Screen 6 Batch Log Stretch the Project window down so that you may see more of the folders the window. Click Node in the Project tree. Click Accept and your screen should look like this: Click Close.

Use this As you are entering tags in the database, make sure your tag names are correct before you accept the tag. It will look like this when you are done.

This will appear: Many of the default values are fine, but we need to set a few. Click OK to close accept the values and close the window. Save the display as System View.

Here is what the pumps shown above might look like to a person who is colorblind. You will find that when placing or resizing some objects, you will have to turn snap off.

Type System View into the text field. Highlight it and click OK. We are taken back to the Numeric Display window. Scroll to the SystemReady tag. Check the Verify box. Here is how our display looks so far: This completes the master layout.

You should have something like this. At runtime, the graphics will sort themselves out and only the correct one will be shown. Click the Command radio button. Click the button to the right of Press Action. Click Next. Click on System View and then click Finish. Type in the information as follows: In a similar manner, create the tags for the preset values of the remaining timers. Your screen should now look like this. Allow Multiple Running Copies: For our application, there is no need for this.

Cache After Displaying: In large applications, this could help speed things up. However, at runtime when RSView is actually running in a live plant environment , you will probably disable this, as it allows more access than the operators need. Size: Specify the correct size of the monitor. This will compensate for minor hardware variations and make sure that the screen will resize to fill the monitor.

Position: In most cases, set this to 0, 0. Security Code: Leave as is for the time being. Background Color: Though it is not obvious, the third square from the upper left is the proper shade of gray. It would be beneficial to you have a good graphics editor, such as a lite version of PhotoShop. Become proficient enough to sample colors so that you can verify the RGB values of the colors you use.

These are the batching step, the current date and time and the navigation menu. You have to consider a number of factors when designing the master layout. Elements of the master layout must be consistent from screen to screen. For example, if you have decided on a header size of x , originating from coordinates 0, 0, then each screen needs to conform to that size and position.

That appears obvious, but I am amazed at how many times this is ignored. RSView32 uses a modified Cartesian coordinate system to define position. The origin 0, 0 is located in the top, left corner of the screen.

As you go to the right, the X value increases. As you go down, the Y value increases. For example, a stated position of , is pixels to the right and pixels down from the origin. This is undesirable and certainly not very professional.

The overall size of the header is important, usually with smaller being better. Besides, a large header will make things difficult as you try to add content valve icons, pump icons, etc. You will run out of room. It may be useful to talk with a graphic designer during this process.

They have studied graphic layouts and designs, and may offer some good advice. However, on the other hand, realize that sometimes graphics designers focus too much on looks and sacrifice functionality.

Dark gray text on a light gray background may be artistically appealing, but it is much more important for the operator to be able to read the display from 10 feet away.

Use your good judgment. Though our project scope did not address this, as designers we must take this into consideration. We could use icons that have different shapes, depending on whether they are on or off. In addition to being a different color, a pump icon that is off could have a round hole cut out in the middle, such as is shown below. Here is what the pumps shown above might look like to a person who is colorblind.

The black dot in the middle of the pump that is off will be appreciated. Another option is to add text. Not only does this help the person who might be colorblind, it obviously confirms the state of the equipment to those even with true color vision. Since the scope states that we must use standard RSView icons, we will use text to define the state of the equipment. All the display graphics files are displayed to the right. Click on the rectangle icon from the toolbar.

As with other Windows programs, you may also find the same command by using the dropdown menus at the top of the screen — it is your choice. Click and drag to form a rectangle at the top of the display.

In some cases, this is undesirable. Using the grid and turning on snap helps place objects accurately on the screen. The default setting is 10 pixels. This will be fine for now.

This limits the placement of handles to the points of the grid. You will find that when placing or resizing some objects, you will have to turn snap off.

Click and drag until the rectangle fills the top section of the screen. It should look something like this. Unfortunately, RSView does not offer the option of specifying the height, width and position of a graphic, except by using animation, which is only seen at runtime.

You just have to pull the handles around until the graphic fits. The cursor changes to a horizontal bar. To add the light blue company color, select the blue header graphic. Of course, you can also use any other Windows technique for cutting and pasting. Drag it down and change the fill color.

Create a new custom color with the RGB value of , , Do this carefully, as you may inadvertently overwrite existing custom colors. Also, change the line color to light blue. Adjust the height of your new light blue rectangle to be about half the existing height.

Move it to the top of the display. Select the light blue rectangle. Now the text should appear, but the light blue rectangle is gone. Select the original blue rectangle and send it to the back. The screen should look something like this. Clearly, the text is too small. The size can be changed by selecting it and dragging the handles.

This is convenient for getting a rough idea, but I would not leave it like that. At runtime, text that was sized this way may be displayed improperly. In placing this text, you will find that the snap function is too limiting — finer resolution is needed. Also, trying to place the text with a mouse is difficult.

Select the text, but leave the cursor inside the selected area. You can then use the arrow keys to move the element a pixel at a time. The Navigation Menu There is certainly a wide range of options when it comes to creating navigation menus. Navigation, or how we get from screen to screen, comes in many forms; some methods are good and some are not so good. I have a few principles that I feel are important. If the user has to stop his train of thought and search for the button or element that needs to take him to where he wants to go, there is a problem.

Multiple paths to the same destination are OK. If the user can get to the alarms screen by clicking the alarm button, but also get to it by clicking on a valve in alarm, that is totally acceptable. In fact, multiple navigational paths add value to an HMI, simply because not every one thinks the same.

Always try to provide immediate feedback to the user after a navigation link is clicked. Most times, having the cursor change to an hourglass is sufficient. Make it immediate obvious to the user that he has reached the screen he was seeking. For example, you might put a title on each screen. Keep the navigation menu consistent from screen to screen. The button, or link, that takes you to Maintenance section, for example, should always be in the same place. User testing is critical to creating good navigation.

This is the single most important step in designing the navigation for an HMI. When you have enough screens developed so that the navigation is in place, grab some co-workers and ask them to individually look at your design.

Put them in front of your computer and let them poke around your system. For example, if you see a test user pause for more than a couple of seconds, trying to find where to click, that is a problem. If they have to ask you how to navigate to a given screen, that is a big problem.

Granted, our design is relatively simple. Chances are that few people will have a problem navigating a system with only six screens. In larger systems, however, user testing is obviously even more important. Just fix it. Since we have just a few screens, a row of pushbuttons in the header should be appropriate. We have six screens, so we need six pushbuttons positioned in the header.

Click and drag in the header. Leaving it checked is usually desirable. We will come back and address that later. Right now, we need to concentrate on getting the layout finished. Select the button and make 5 copies of it. Roughly place the buttons in a row beside the original button. We have a problem. We have some options. We could make the font smaller, and perhaps make buttons taller.

We could use abbreviations in the text. The only way to really solve the problem is to try these options and see which one works out the best. In a real world situation, I would make it a point to discuss this with the client or customer and get his approval.

However, the color palette that appears does not include the custom colors that we made earlier. To get the background color of the button to match the blue specified in the scope, you must use a background bitmap for the button.

First, make a bitmap of the RGB color you need. I used PhotoShop, but you can use any image editor. The size is not too important, as RSView will scale it to fit the button.

Your custom bitmap is now part of your button. RSView has a special function to display the time and date. This window appears. A list of all the user-defined tags the ones we created earlier appears.

Double-click on the folder icon in the upper right to expand the folder. Open it. Create a numeric display field for the date in the same way. Align the two fields on the display. At runtime, when you are actually connected to a PLC, make sure that everything shows properly. Batching Step We have to display the batching step in which the system is currently operating. The batching steps, including the state of the system being ready to batch, from the scope, are: System Ready Add City Water Add Ingredient QR Add Ingredient KM Mix the batch Pump the batch to the filling lines Since all of these messages will appear in the same area of the screen, it is preferable to have the messages about the same length.

This is another point that should be discussed with, and approved by the client. Change the font to Arial 18 Bold Black. We can always adjust it later. Copy and paste the text element five times. Change the text in the copies to match the remaining states of the system. Use the Rectangle button on the toolbar to make a rectangle that is large enough for the longest message to fit in.

Change the line color to black and the fill color to white. Our goal is to place all of the messages in the rectangle and, through the Animation function of RSView, control the visibility of each message. Depending on the state of the system, only one message at a time will be visible.

The remainder of the messages will not be seen. As you can see, there are a number of attributes that we can change with animation. This is a powerful function of RSView and we will use it frequently throughout our project. You can change the position of an element, the fill percentage to make your own bar graph, for example , the color, the width, the height or define a command that is executed when the element is clicked. You can define just a tag to initiate the animation or write a complex Boolean expression.

In this case, we will just define a tag. What is checked in this box is what will happen when the expression is true. In a similar fashion, add animation to the remainder of the text messages. Now we have to align all of the messages and put them in the rectangle. Select the rectangle. We want to make sure that all of the messages are in front of the box so that they are not hidden. Click and drag the cursor so that you have selected all the messages and the rectangle.

This will re-position all the elements so that all of their centers are on the same point. Resize it to a more appropriate aspect ratio and your screen looks like this. Yes, it looks like a mess; at runtime, though, they will sort themselves out. Alarm Indication If there is a fault, or alarm, we want to make it very clear to the operator. Change the line color border of the rectangle to red. Change the fill color to yellow. Change the font size to 16 and the color to red.

Select both the text and rectangle and align the centers of the elements using the drop down menu as we did with the batch step messages. We will use animation to make this visible when a fault is detected in the PLC. We want the box and the text to be invisible if there is no alarm. If there is an alarm, we want them both to be visible. That way, we only have to assign one animation to the group. Upon completion of this RSVeiw certificate course, you will be able to effectively create a new RSView graphics project and configure the proper components create and program RSView graphics.

This will be evidenced by the successful completion of assignment sheets, practical and interactive exercises and the final exam. Reference Notes: If you have the Panelview or the Panelview your maintenance and engineering staff should Include this distance learning course in their HMI and SCADA training before taking on those control engineering projects. Note: Alarming is an extremely important aspect of HMI and SCADA systems, so this distance learning course is designed to give you a firm understanding of the use and configuration of both digital and analog alarms.

The competent technician will have a good working knowledge of the processes and procedures involved in creating these runtime versions. Upon completion of this unit, you will be able to discuss and use runtime versions of practical visualization systems.

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