Product Description and Getting Started with Adroit

Transcription

1 Product Description and Getting Started with Adroit

2 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION... 2 ADROIT TECHNOLOGIES... 2 WHAT IS SCADA/HMI AND HOW IS IT USED?... 2 BASIC FUNCTIONALITY OF A SCADA SYSTEM... 4 Trending or Data Logging... 4 Alarm and Event Management... 4 Alarm and Event Management... 5 Recipe or Batch Management... 5 Sharing Information... 6 Supported Open Interfaces... 6 ADROIT THE PRODUCT... 7 HOW IS IT PACKAGED?... 7 FOREMOST FEATURES... 8 INDUSTRIES AND APPLICATIONS GETTING STARTED Introduction General Overview Installing the Software Testing the software CONFIGURING ADROIT AN END-TO-END PROJECT Organizing your Directory Structure Running the Setup Program Configuring the Agent Server Parameters Configuring the User Interface (UI) Preferences Drivers Configuring an Adroit Protocol Driver Starting the Agent Server and Configuring Agents (Tags) Starting and Configuring the User Interface (UI) Configuring Picture or Mimic Windows Configuring Trend Windows Configuring Alarm Windows Navigating between Windows Setting up a Workspace CONCLUSION

3 INTRODUCTION The Adroit product is a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA/HMI) software package developed by Adroit Technologies. This document provides a basic introduction to Adroit Technologies and the Adroit SCADA software package. The getting started part of the document is there to help users who haven t yet been exposed to Adroit and takes you through a step by step overview of installing, configuring and using this product. ADROIT TECHNOLOGIES Since 1992, Adroit Technologies, a company based in South Africa, have been developing SCADA/HMI software solutions for the industrial automation and process control industries. With over successful installations, in over 10 countries in the world, Adroit is one of the world s top selling SCADA/HMI products. Adroit Technologies are a Microsoft Certified Partner Company. This allows Adroit Technologies to stay in regular contact with Microsoft and remain up to date with the latest advancements in software development. All this ensures that Adroit remains one of the leading SCADA packages, both now and in the future. WHAT IS SCADA/HMI AND HOW IS IT USED? Put simply SCADA software is a means of graphically monitoring, recording and controlling a process. The most common scenario for a SCADA package is to read and write information to a PLC which in-turn is sending and receiving information from field devices such as motors, pumps, drives, sensors etc, etc. 2

4 An operator would normally click on a graphical object such as a motor to turn it on or off. Values such as temperatures, motor speeds, and liquid levels can be displayed graphically in a user-friendly environment. At a glance operators can obtain an overall view of the process in a meaningful manner, as opposed to a panel full of indicating lights and pushbuttons. All of this information can be viewed on any number of computers throughout the facility, from plant floor operators to the general manager s office. Example of a Typical SCADA Display Screen or Mimic: 3

5 BASIC FUNCTIONALITY OF A SCADA SYSTEM Trending or Data Logging Values such as temperatures, liquid levels, production rates, and motor speeds can be recorded and also viewed over a specified period of time via a trend window. 4

6 Alarm and Event Management The ability to control and manage alarms and events that happen within a process. Recipe or Batch Management The ability to control and manage ingredients for a given product. An example maybe a cement mixing plant that have numerous grades of concrete each requiring varying amounts of sand, water, and aggregate. By selecting the appropriate recipe Adroit will download all relevant parameters to the PLC for processing. In addition to this each mix will be assigned a batch number as a reference, which can be used for tracking purposes. 5

7 Sharing Information SCADA systems can provide information to any third party application, which support standard data exchange formats i.e. Spreadsheets, or Databases, which can be used to create web-based reports, which management can use to directly monitor production and profits from their offices. It is also a user-friendly way of producing reports, charts and graphs relating to activity on the factory floor. Supported Open Interfaces Modern SCADA systems should provide users with ways to access and use plant floor data. Adroit supports standard interfaces such as DDE, OPC (Adroit is an OPC Client and an OPC Server), in addition advanced users can use OLE, ActiveX and connectivity directly to databases using our DBAccess Agent technology. There are more advanced API s available to allow tighter integration to Adroit. This functionality allows users to provide information to any third party application, which support standard data exchange formats i.e. Spreadsheets, or Databases, which can be used to In addition to the PLC, there are many other front-end devices that Adroit can communicate with. These include telemetry systems, energy meters, data loggers, and DCS. Furthermore Adroit can be used as a gateway, linking the factory process to higher-level data management systems such as Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) and Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP). 6

8 ADROIT THE PRODUCT The word Adroit means skillful, or dexterous, it is also an acronym for Advanced Distributed Realtime Object oriented Intelligent Toolkit. A general description that we often use to describe Adroit is: Adroit is a technologically advanced 32-bit SCADA system designed for process control, manufacturing systems and open automation applications. Developed specifically for Windows NT and compatible operating systems e.g. Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server Adroit has a flexible object-oriented client server architecture that supports from a standalone implementation to an installation spanning multiple sites. HOW IS IT PACKAGED? Adroit is sold/licensed based on two criteria i.e. the number of scan points and remote clients. The total number of digital and analog points to be communicated between the PC and the PLC is the number of Scan Points, some of you will know these as external I/O, or tags. Remote clients refer to the number of additional PCs that will be running Adroit user interfaces so that multiple users can view the process simultaneously. Adroit is packaged in 10 different scan point sizes; these are 30, 75, 150, 300, 750, 1500, 2500, 5000, and unlimited (the only limitation is the system capability). This allows the user to purchase the size that best fits the application. Functionality of all packages is uniform, irrespective of the number of scan points and remote clients. On purchasing Adroit the customer receives the following: A CD containing all of the Adroit tools to configure and run the system. The CD also contains a multimedia presentation, training materials, all available PLC drivers/interfaces, over 300 pre-configured graphic objects such as meters, lights, conveyors, pumps etc, sample applications, and a comprehensive help system. License Key (HASP), which fits the parallel or USB port as required 7

9 FOREMOST FEATURES Major features of Adroit that should be conveyed to potential customers: No Separate Development System Adroit unlike many other packages, does not have a separate development package. All the tools to configure the system and draw process mimics etc. are packaged in Adroit as standard. When you buy Adroit you get the lot. Therefore it is possible to perform engineering from any workstation without first installing additional components. On-line Configuration Substantial savings in both time and cost can be achieved with the on-line configuration capabilities of Adroit, there s no off-line mode or recompiling required. Now you can add tags, create trends and change mimics on the fly. Vector Based Graphics Adroit uses vector-based graphics (same technology as used by CAD drawing packages), which are easier to use and manipulate than standard bitmap graphics. Vector based graphics allow the user to zoom in any number of times without loss of clarity or resolution. Plant VCR Adroit provides you with this facility to use mimics to replay historical data. Plant VCR means that you no longer need to delve through extensive log files, or extract data from reports to see what the process was doing last night or last year. Simply enable the Plant VCR option within a mimic and you are able to navigate to the required historical information directly and view it as it happened. Marshal Agent This allows the user to read and write 16 consecutive bits within the PLC as if it were one scan point. Each of these bits has the full functionality of a normal Digital agent. This means the user can reduce the size of the package by implementing Marshal agents throughout the design. 8

10 SNMP Manager Agents This allows the user to monitor any SNMP enabled object on the network. For instance this can be used to predict network and networked resource failures by monitoring bandwidth used and free disk space. Mobile Phone Support With Adroit, process alarms, and operator messages can be routed to a mobile phone (GSM based networks only) via the SMS messaging function. Engineering or maintenance personnel can now be notified of process problems, or potentially dangerous situations no matter where they are. Visual Basic and Java Scripting The open philosophy of Adroit is further enhanced with the inclusion of Visual Basic and Java scripting editors. This gives the user the facility to manipulate data, manage user interface operations, control third party data, automate complex tasks and perform mathematical operations. Wizards As standard with Adroit you get over 300 pre-configured common graphical objects. This allows for fast design, and professional looking mimics. Examples of the wizards are pushbuttons, panel meters, indicators, motors, pumps, tanks, and many more. Adroit also allows you to create your own wizards for use in later projects, which is extremely useful for system integrators. Openness Another feature of Adroit is its ability to share data with other 3rd party software packages such as Microsoft Excel, or Access for example. There are a number of 3 letter acronyms that are associated with the standards for sharing data. These are OLE, OLE DB, DDE, and OPC. Adroit supports all of these standards. Hot Standby / Redundancy This is achieved by the completely automated client and server redundancy strategy of Adroit, known as Active Clusters. This will ensure that if the computer running the real-time, tag database suffers a catastrophic hardware or software failure, that the loss of data or operator control and monitoring capability will be avoided, enabling a high availability of the system. An Active cluster is a set of two servers, a master and a standby server, running a replicated database of the same project. 9

11 INDUSTRIES AND APPLICATIONS PLCs and thus SCADA are being used in more and more industries everyday, such as: General Manufacturing Mining Petrochemical Mineral Processing Pulp and Paper Automotive Food and Beverage Pharmaceutical and Medical Energy Management Building Management Water Treatment/Distribution Cement Agriculture Nuclear Food and Beverage Power Utilities Telecommunications There are a limitless number of applications that are suited to Adroit. Various application stories are available from the Adroit web page ( 10

12 GETTING STARTED Introduction This section serves to give you, a prospective ADROIT user, an overview of the product, its installation, features and use. This does not replace the on-line help or the training material. It is written, hopefully from a layman s point of view and is really aimed at a first time user who, with this document, can at least obtain an understanding of the basic principals of the ADROIT software. Since this is a getting started guide, it does not cover the more advanced features of the product. General Overview In order to understand Adroit it is important to understand the basic architecture of the product. The job of a SCADA/HMI product like Adroit is to communicate to a Front End Device using a protocol driver. Drivers then access real-time data and feed it into an Agent (or TAG) of a certain type in the Adroit Agent Server. The Agent Server, which is the real-time database, handles the real-time values and if configured, will log and/or alarm the data. This data can also be displayed within the User Interface(s). We will deal with each of these aspects separately here: Front End Device (FED) Front end device (FED) hardware is designed to measure real time variables and put these values into it s own real time database. Most modern FEDs support communications and can be interfaced to using a known or defined protocol. We have over 100 different protocol drivers available for Adroit. Many such devices use common or standard protocols such as the Modbus protocol. A complete list of available protocols is available on our CD and can also be downloaded from our website. Examples of FEDs 1. Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) 2. Remote Telemetry Units (RTU) 3. Energy Meters 4. Dataloggers Drivers The first component of Adroit which we will deal with is the protocol driver. This is a piece of software (DLL) that essentially plugs into the Adroit Agent Server. The driver knows how to communicate to the FED that you wish to get data from. Hence there are many different protocol drivers available. Adroit Technologies have developed well over 100 different 11

13 drivers. We also support OPC, the industry standard for Process Data adopted by all popular device vendors providing effortless connecting. A list of the available drivers is available on our website ( What is important to note is that we do not install all the drivers off the CD when you install Adroit for the first time. You need to know which device you wish to communicate to and hence the required protocol driver and go through a separate installation process after completely installing the Adroit product onto your PC. This process will be covered later. You can download any driver off the website or access them off the installation CD. Agent Server The first component of Adroit we will deal with is the Adroit Agent Server (AS). This is the real time database or engine of Adroit. This is where all the Agents (tags) are configured, where all scanning using the protocol drivers happens, along with all the logging and alarming. When you run the Agent Server application it loads the following: 1. All the product base files (DLL s) 2. The selected database (extension WGP) as selected in the setup. 3. The drivers loaded and configured in the configuration Figure showing the Agent Server window on start-up. You can see that it lists all the DLLs as it loads them and then at the bottom which WGP file it loads. It also shows you what licensing has been configured. On that it is important to note that Adroit is licensed using a security dongle, in Adroit speak it is known as a HASP. This is a USB device that plug s in the Server machine and is configured according to the order as received. Adroit is licensed in two dimensions, the first 12

14 is the number of scan points you wish to communicate to using the drivers, the second is the number of remote connections that can concurrently connect to the Agent Server. The options available on scan points are 30, 75, 150, 300, 750, 1500, 2500, 5000, and system limited. There is no limitation on the number of remote connections. A scan point is essentially one point (value) in the front end device you are communicating to. There are some exceptions namely when you use special internal agents such as OLEDB, Scripting or SNMP, which each consume a scan point per agent that is used. We therefore suggest that you speak with your sales representative to assist you to calculate your specific license requirements. All internal tags such as log tags, alarm tags do not consume scan points. There is a complete document on the finer details of licensing and should you need this please contact Adroit Technologies. User Interface This is the application used to build your displays or mimics from the data that is available in the Agent Server. You configure your mimics using the four document types, namely: mimic, alarm, trend or event documents, depending on what data you want to make available in the UI. There is not much more to say except that we will deal with the basics of the User Interface in the next section that will see us use it to display a real-time value. Installing the Software You need two things to get Adroit running. 1. You need to install the Adroit software. 2. You need to install and setup the correct driver for your FED. a. We do not install every driver when you install Adroit so this needs to be done as a separate exercise. If you have downloaded the Adroit software you will need to run this executable. If you install from the CD it should Autorun the install process as you put the CD into the CD drive. You will then select a Typical installation and the product will take you through a series of screens just use your common sense and you will then install the product onto your machine. If you then would like to install our demo configuration, which is full of examples and will allow you to really get to know the product, you will first need to download the demo off the web and run the installation for this. It will then install the demo software configuration and the necessary short cuts. If you have the CD and are running the software for the first time we suggest you select a Full installation as this will install both the software and the demo. 13

15 Testing the software If you have the demo installed you will have a shortcut on your desktop called Adroit Demo. Just double click this icon and it will first run the Agent Server and then launch the UI. It may take 10 or so seconds. After this you should then see the landing page. Figure showing the demo landing page You can now navigate using the buttons and menu structure through the entire product. Note: What you are seeing here is a full demo using the features of Adroit. Once you know the basics you will be able to then dig deeper to understand what we have done to achieve certain things in the product, but more of this later. In demo mode the product will run for 1 hour with scan points and 2 remote connections allowed. This allows you to configure, test and play around whilst you are learning. At the time you need to deploy or run on a customer site you will need to have a HASP key that has been licensed with the correct number of Scan Points and Remote Connections for your project. 14

16 CONFIGURING ADROIT AN END-TO-END PROJECT Now you are ready to get into some serious engineering. In order to do this you will need to go through the following steps in order to complete an end to end of a typical Adroit project. We are going to perform the following tasks: 1. Organizing your files a. Suggested directory structure for a typical Adroit project 2. Run the Setup Program and select the following a. Setup your Agent Server details. b. Setup your UI preferences c. Install a setup a driver 3. Start the Agent Server in Time Licensed Mode (runs for 1 hour with scan points and 2 remote connections) 4. Start the UI a. Add an Analogue Agent b. Configure Scaling on the Agent c. Configure Logging d. Configure Alarming e. Scan the Agent to the Driver f. Start the Device a. Open a new mimic b. Add a text object and add a behaviour to allow us to read from the Agent c. Add a behaviour to write to the Agent d. Add a rectangle and configure it to display a percentage fill based on the scaled value of the Agent e. Open and configure a Trend window f. Open and configure an Alarm wind to display and alarm 15

17 Organizing your Directory Structure Successful SCADA project require a lot of thinking and organizing. We suggest you create the following directory and file structure in order that your Adroit projects are well organized and easily managed. It is recommended that the Adroit Software must be separated from the configured project. This allows for easier backups, upgrades etc. It is also recommended that this partition be formatted using the NTFS file system. An data directory is automatically created off the installed Adroit directory. This contains further directories, namely: \customagents for all custom agents created for the project; \server into which all configuration pertaining to the server must be placed, including.wgp file, *.BAS; \userinterface all mimics, trends and alarm windows etc. An AdroitDatalogs directory could also be created off the root directory, which contains all the Adroit datalogs and possibly the OLE DB database that is used for reporting. Figure showing the recommended Adroit directory structure 16

18 Running the Setup Program Just navigate from the Start menu to the Adroit Program group and run the Adroit Setup Program. For the purposes of the exercise we are going to be installing Adroit at the ACME Manufacturing facility. This facility has three plants, namely: PlantA, PlantB and PlantC we are setting up the first Adroit system in PlantA. The PLC they are going to be using is a Mitsubishi FX. Figure showing the default Setup dialogue box Configuring the Agent Server Parameters The Select Configuration This is what you would like to call this particular instance of the Setup. It is changed by clicking on the Save As button at the bottom of the dialogue. We will do this after we have made all the changes as follows. Agent Server Type This provides the following options: 1. Stand-alone/Distributed Server. This is used most of the time in a typical installation. 2. Cluster Aware Server This is required when you need stand-alone Agent Servers to operate with a cluster pair (a set of hot-standby Agent Servers) in a distributed project. Since you are otherwise unable to have multiple Agent Servers with the same name in a Project. 3. Cluster If you are setting up a hot standby solution (cluster pair) you need to select each of the Agent Servers in the cluster to be of type Cluster. For the purpose of this exercise just leave the selection to be Stand-alone 17

19 Project Name Adroit can share information seamlessly between Agent Servers that have the same Project Name. So if you need to share data between Agent Servers, you need to have a common name for the different Agent Servers. It is also important to note that you have to have unique Agent/Tag names in a Project. Change this to be ACME Agent Server Name This is the logical name for the Agent Server. You can call this what you like. Typically it might be the area of plant that you are controlling. Change this to be PlantA Auto-Load File Name This is the logical name for the WGP or database file. This stores the entire configuration of this Agent Server. You can call this what you like. Typically it might be the area of plant that you are controlling. Change this to be PlantA Save this Configuration Select Save As at the bottom of the dialogue box and call this Plant A. You will now have the following if you select the PlantA configuration from the drop down list box in the setup program: Figure showing the default Setup dialogue box 18

20 Configuring the User Interface (UI) Preferences Adroit path This is where you can setup the local paths which the User Interface will use to locate files, for instance when you execute a command on a mimic such as open another mimic or run an application etc. The Adroit User Interface provides two methods by which files can be referenced, either absolutely by specifying their full path and filename or relatively, by only specifying their filename. When using the relative method, the Adroit installation folder and all of the paths that have been added to this Adroit path list is searched for this file. The importance of this setting is best illustrated by means of an example, suppose that your configuration is currently on the D: drive and later you decide to move the entire configuration to the C: drive. If you have used absolute file referencing then you will need to go through and reconfigure your mimics. However if you have used the relative file referencing, all you need to do is add the new locations to the Adroit path list once for all your mimics, saving you both time and money. This will become obvious when we do the configuration of a mimic. Select a Window Type This allows you to manage your memory usage by specifying how many instances of a particular window can be open at anyone time. It is less important these days with memory being virtually unlimited, but it is nevertheless good engineering practice to manage these windows. Adroit will shutdown the oldest open window type according to these settings. Figure showing the User Interface (UI) Preferences dialogue 19

21 Drivers Installing a Adroit Protocol Driver As we stated for our sample project we are going to be using a Mitsubishi FX driver to communicate to the PLC. You will need to have the Adroit CD in a drive that is accessible to you at this stage. Figure showing the Adroit protocol driver configuration dialogue 20

22 The following are the steps we need to take to install and setup the Mitsubishi Driver. 1. Click on Install and then select the browse the list of Drivers until you find MitsubishiFX. 2. Select the MitsubishiFX Driver and click on Copy. a. This will copy the driver DLL and driver document in MS Word format onto your computer, into the Adroit installation folder. Read this document carefully as it contains all the information you need to get Adroit communicating to the PLC, including cable setup etc. b. Once complete click on the Close button. c. You will now have a MitshubishiFX driver available for use, that is to allow you to create instances of the driver or Device which would be a particular PLC on the network. If the type allows such communication strategy. Figure showing how to install protocol drivers in Adroit 21

23 Configuring an Adroit Protocol Driver After installing the Driver you need to create a Device which is just an instance of the driver for communicating to a physical device. This is done by clicking on Add button after selecting the Driver in the left hand list. You will be then asked to give the Device a logical name. You are limited to 8-characters when naming this device. Call it PLCA because we are going to be communicating to the PLC in PlantA. Figure showing how to name a Device before it is configured Once you click OK a dialogue will appear to allow you to configure the Device you have just added, which in this case being a serial driver is rather simple. Note: Each driver/device type you install will have a unique setup and you need to understand the setup required for the device. 22

24 Figure showing a protocol driver configuration dialogue Once you have setup the device all there is left to do is to start the communications going and this is done from within the Agent Configurator window in the User Interface. (see later) There are a number of diagnostics tools available and the most important one is the Driver Monitor which can be run from Adroit Program group. This allows you to watch and diagnose the protocol for problems. You are now complete in terms of the setup program and are in a position to start configuring Agents and displaying values on a mimic. 23

25 Starting the Agent Server and Configuring Agents (Tags) Start the Agent Server If you don t have a HASP plugged in to the machine you can still run Adroit in a time licensed mode. There is no limitation to how many times you can start this mode, the only limit is that you can scan I/O from a PLC for an hour at a time and only connect 2 remote clients to the Agent Server. The Agent Server is started from the Adroit program group, or from the AS (time licensed) short cut on the desk top. In order to configure Agents you will also need to start the User Interface (UI), again this is done from the Adroit Program group or from a shortcut on the desktop. Once both have started you can connect the Configurator Window to the Agent Server for Agent configuration purposes by clicking on the Configurator icon in the main toolbar, it looks like a little spreadsheet. Figure showing how to open the Configurator dialogue in the Adroit user interface The Configurator window is where you do all the configuration of all the Agents necessary for your project. There are over 20 different Agent Types in Adroit. Each Agent has a unique functionality and we urge you to read up on the functionality of each agent. For the purpose of this thin-slice we are only going to be dealing with an Agent of type Analogue. 24

26 Adding an Analogue Agent In order to add an Agent you first need to select the Type first. 1. So from the pull down list box select Analog. 2. Click on the Add button. 3. Type in the name of the Analogue Agent, for our purposes name it ANALOGUE Click on Edit in order to configure the properties or values of this Agent. Figure showing the configuration dialogue for an Analog Agent Configure the Scaling of the Analogue Agent The reason we call Tags in Adroit Agents is that our Tags have their own intelligence encapsulated within the instance of the Agent. For example you can scale, add alarm levels etc. within the Agent itself. So for this example we are assuming that the ANALOGUE001 in the PLC is a 16bit BCD value being read directly from a sensor that would come into the Agent as a number between 0 and And represents say a tank level that we would like to handle as a number between 0 and 100, being the percentage value of the level in the tank. 1. The Device Span needs to be set at 0 and 4095 (refer above figure). 2. The Engineering Span then needs to be set at 0 and While we are here let s also set the alarm limits. The High alarm to say 90 and the High- High to 95. We will use these later. 25

27 Configure the Logging The logging and Historian capability of Adroit is exceptionally powerful and needs careful attention. All we will cover here are the salient logging features of the product, since this is only a getting started document. 1. You can log any attribute/slot of any agent. 2. You can log continuously, on demand (by a trigger) or both. 3. Multiple log sets you can log as many instances and variance of the agent. 4. You can log to the Adroit proprietary log system and/or directly into an OLEDB database. 5. You can configure the nature of the data; actual, average, minimum, maximum etc within a monitoring period. Everything you do with an Agent is done from within the Agent editor dialogue. This includes configuration, scanning, alarming and logging. For the purposes of the ACME plant we are going to log the scaled value at a rate of 10seconds for a period of 24 hours. With the ANALOGUE001 Agent selected click on the Log button and you will get the log setup dialogue box. Figure showing logging configuration dialogue The following steps need to me followed to configure the logging: 1. Select the attribute or agent Slot you wish to log. In our scenario we are going to log the default value slot, which is the scaled value of ANALOGUE Select the Mode in this case use the default setting of Continuous. 3. We are going to be only creating a single log set so leave the Set number as 0. 26

28 4. The Datasource specifies the file location and name of the.lgd files (adroit log files) and is completely configurable. This is completely configurable and it is suggested that you would browse your Adroitdatalogs directory and call it a file name that would make sense to you for this project. 5. Click on the Length button, to configure the required length of logging and select 24 hours. 6. Click on the Time button, this configures the required sample period. Please note that Adroit only logs the value if it has changed more than the selected Deadband in the sample period. This to conserve space in the log files. 7. Select the required method of Compression of the sampled data in the log period, in other words how the value is calculated for each sample period, in this case leave the default value of Actual, which is the value of this slot at the end of each sample period. 8. Once configured all you need to do now is click on the Start radio button o the top of the dialogue. Note: If you want to make changes to the configuration or stop the logging at any stage you need only click on the Stop radio button. You will see later that this is simply a slot of the Agent and that you could in fact do this from a mimic, or even a digital scanned from a PLC. Configure the Alarming The Alarming capability of Adroit is exceptionally powerful and needs careful attention. All we will cover here are the most important features of alarming in Adroit, since this is only a getting started document. 1. You can alarm any slot of any agent. 2. You can Route alarms to various outputs, lists, printers, databases, multimedia players etc. The alarming architecture is as follows, it uses internal Agents called Alarm Agents, which handle the routing of alarms. We are going to use the defaults as setup in the Adroit system. However, you should spend a little time understanding the alarming capabilities. The step by step approach to alarming would be: 1. Select the Alarm button for the Agent you wish to alarm in the Configurator dialogue i.e. ANALOGUE By default the defaultalarmagent Alarm agent is selected. 27

29 3. You will see what default types of alarms are available for the agent. For an Analogue agent, they are General Alarm, Hi-Hi, Hi,Low and Low-Low and Rate of Change. When we configured the agent we in fact put in limits for both High and High-high alarms. So select and move High-High and High to the left hand side of the dialogue box, using the << button. Figure showing the alarm configuration dialogue 4. Select each Current Alarm Type, from this list and select Route Number 1 which will use one of the default routes to the local event log and the local AlarmList. 5. You have now successfully setup alarming for our ANALOGUE001 Agent. 6. All that remains is to open up an Alarm window in the UI and the ANALOGUE will be displayed if the scaled value exceeds 85 and 90 as configured in the Agent. We will do this later. Configure the Scanning Scanning which can also be known as The section is where you tell the Device Agent which Agents and which slots need to be Scanned to which PLC addresses as configured for the Device we created earlier, PLCA. This is done in the following steps. 1. Select the Scan dialogue box from the Agent ANALOGUE001 you will get the following dialogue. 28

30 Figure showing the scanning configuration dialogue 2. Select the PLCA device, which has been created previously in the Setup program, from the Device drop down list box 3. Select the Agent and its Slot you wish to scan. In our case we want to scan the rawvalue slot of the ANALOGUE001 agent. 4. Select the Address in the PLC. 5. The Scan rate (ms) is the desired scan rate you would like the Adroit Agent Server to update itself with. Note that this is used as a guideline because Adroit tries to intelligently minimize the number of Scan jobs it has to perform. Thus optimizing the communications. So if you have consecutive addresses at different Scan rates Adroit will probably create a single scan job at the lowest scan rate. 6. Should you wish to be able to write to the PLC from a mimic then you will need to check the Output Enabled check box. 7. Once complete click the Scan button this will add it to the list. 8. To start the scanning process all you need to do then is select the Started radio button at the top of the dialogue. 9. Scanning to a PLC can be stopped by simply checking the Stopped radio button. Or even simply writing a 1 into the Start Slot of the PLCA device agent. This is a little more advanced but is included so that you can start to understand the flexibility provided by the object based nature and architecture of the Adroit product. 29

31 Starting and Configuring the User Interface (UI) Start the User Interface Just to re-cap we have installed the software, added a driver, created a device, added an Analogue Agent, scanned, logged and alarmed the agent. So all of the data side is complete, it is now time to build a visual/graphical representation of the data. By now you would have in fact have the UI open to run the Configurator to do what we have gone through so far. It is time now to display and control the graphics, trends and alarm screens. If you don t have the UI running just start it from the program group or short cut on your desk top (this is assuming at this stage you still have the Agent Server (AS) running). You will be looking at a blank User Interface as follows. Just browse around and get a feel for the features and settings offered by the toolbars and icons. Figure showing the User Interface layout. Adroit user Interfaces are made up of various different Window types: 1. Pictures or Mimic Windows. These have a file extension.mim and are the main graphical representations. 2. Trend Windows. These have a.trn extension and are where you configure your Trend displays. 3. Alarm Windows. These have a.alm extension and are where you configure your Alarm displays. 4. Event Windows. These have a.evt extension and are where you configure your Event displays. 5. Recipe Windows. These have a.rcp extension and are special windows that allow the user to interact and control Recipe Agents. 6. Wizard Windows. These have a.wiz extension and allow the user to build your own reusable Wizards and Shapes. There are over 500 predefined wizards and shapes 30

32 available to allow you to use pre-drawn graphical objects that will quickly allow you to build projects without starting from scratch. We are only going to deal with the three most commonly used documents in this getting started document, namely the mimic, trend and alarm window types. Configuring Picture or Mimic Windows Select the New toolbar button, which displays the New Window selection dialogue select a Picture type from the list and press the OK button. This will open a blank mimic screen that looks like this. Figure showing a blank mimic window Some simple things you need to be made aware of: 1. The Adroit UI is both a design time and runtime environment. By simply clicking on the Toggle View toolbar button you can dynamically switch this mimic between design and runtime modes. 2. Double click on the mimic and it will display the properties of this picture that primarily affect its display. Since this is only a getting started document, please refer to the online help for more information concerning these, if necessary. 3. Adroit uses Vector Graphics that uses the world co-ordinates and not pixels, with the 0,0 position being is in the bottom left hand corner. Therefore, if you size a page it sizes from the bottom left, so ensure you build smaller mimics with this in mind. 4. You will notice 2 floating toolbars the first is used for drawing, the second for editing. Note it is possible to use a grid to assist one to arrange the drawing elements, this is added by enabling the Grid menu item of the View menu. 31

33 Drawing Mimics and Adding Behaviours Adroit mimics are very easy to configure and their configuration essentially adopts the following logical process: 1. Draw the required static object, known as a picture element, on the screen. Some of the picture elements that can be added include: lines, poly-lines, rectangles, squares, circles, ellipses and text. 2. The appearance of this picture element can be modified by means of its static properties, such as the shape, color, font style, and line thickness, to provide the required look and feel of this object, 3. If necessary, this picture element or static object can be animated by assigning one or more behaviors to it. Behaviors are dynamic and provide a visual indication of events taking place in the plant, and give the object the ability to change its appearance in accordance with actual values. Once you get the basics, the only limitation is your imagination and inventiveness in creating the required UI for your project. Note: The behaviours that can be assigned to a picture element depend upon its nature, for instance you are unable to add a Percentage Fill behaviour to a line, but you can add it to a rectangle or any other closed object that can be filled. The following behaviours can be added to picture elements: 1. Background Colour changes the background colour based on the value of an Agent being 0 or Greater than Execute Command this can perform various commands such as to launch an external application, open close other Windows, Mimics etc. 3. Line Colour - changes the background colour based on the value of an agent being 0 or Greater than Location dynamically moves an object based on the value of an Agent. 5. Multi-Colour changes the colour of an object based on different values. 6. Operator Action allows input from an operator to change the values of Agents. 7. Percentage Fill To shade an object based on the value of an Agent. 8. Rotation rotates an object based on the value of an Agent. 9. Size changes the size of an object based on the value of an Agent. 10. Slider this allows values to be changed based on an operator sliding a graphic object. 11. Tooltip adds dynamic tool tips to objects that can display process values and even open other mimics, trends, simply by running your mouse over the object. 12. Visibility makes an object invisible and visible based on the value of an Agent. In addition to creating your own picture elements and their animation from scratch, Adroit also provides the following methods that can save you time and effort, in this regard: 1. Wizard: This is a pre-drawn and pre-configured graphical object that can be used to simplify and speed up the task of creating pictures. 32

34 2. Template Picture: This is a single picture that is able to display different sets of data, without requiring a separate picture for each individual set. For further details regarding these methods please consult the Adroit help file. Editing Mimic Example By way of example, we are initially going to create a text object and modify its appearance and use it to display the scaled value of the ANALOGUE001 value. 1. Add a Text object to the screen by clicking on the little A or Text icon in the editing toolbar. Place it on the mimic we have open and simply left click with the mouse. This drops the Text object on the screen. 2. If you keep clicking you will simply keep placing text objects on the screen, as with most Windows applications to revert to Edit mode click on the arrow tool in the editing toolbar. 3. Once in edit mode change the static properties by double-clicking on the Text object. You can change the size, font and colour of the displayed text. 4. We now wish to display the scaled value of the ANALOGUE001 Agent we have created. This is done by either double-clicking on the object in edit mode or right-clicking immediately opens the behaviours list and dialogue box. 5. Select the Display Value behaviour and you will be prompted with a dialogue that asks you for an Agent and Slot with which you wish to bind this behaviour to. 6. Browse to the Basic / Analog branch in the tree and click on the ANALOGUE001 tag and its Value slot should be selected by default, click the OK button. 7. Click on Finish and Adroit will close all the selected dialogue boxes. Figure showing the four basic steps to adding a behaviour to a static graphic object 33

35 Testing Mimics As we have pointed out before Adroit offers you a unique Design and Runtime environment in the same User Interface. So click on the Toggle View toolbar (looks like and eye and a pencil). toolbar button in the main The first time you do this you will be prompted to Save Picture, and remembering the best practice project structure we spoke of earlier, simply browse to the correct directory and provide your mimic with a logical file name. Once saved click the toolbar button again and Adroit will allow you to simply toggle between design and view modes. Continuing the Mimic Editing Example The rest of this exercise repeats the actions performed on the Text picture element using other graphic objects and assigning differrent behaviours to them. What we are going to do is create a tank and to modify its static look to make it look like a steel tank. We are then going to animate the tank with the scaled value of the ANALOGUE001 value. 1. Add a Rectangle picture element to the mimic. 2. Edit the static look and feel by selecting Shaded from the list box and pressing the Edit button to the right of this to modifying the shading properties as per the following diagram. Figure showing how to shade a rectangle picture element 34

36 3. Add a Percentage Fill behaviour to this Rectangle object and browse in the ANALOGUE001.Value tag again using the Agent Browser and click the Finish button. Repeat the toggle view process and you will then see your tank being filled in the colour you selected in the behaviour dialogue. Figure showing how the completed mimic should appear By now you should know enough to begin experimenting and creating your own mimics. If you need further assistance on animating and editing mimics consult the help file, which describes all of the available picture elements and the behaviours that can be assigned to them. 35

37 Configuring Trend Windows Trends are another form of Window that are specifically designed to display historical data. If you remember when we discussed logging that you can select multiple log sets and also that you can select to log to an OLEDB database, well the Adroit trend is designed to extract the data from most logical data sets, based on the time span selected on the trend at the time. Some features of the trend window are: 1. Supports up to 8 pens. 2. Trend Windows are both real-time and historical trends. 3. You can select to have different Y axis areas for each pen. 4. You can automatically fill under the trend with different colours based on the value of the data. Adroit Trending is very simple and very easy to configure essentially you follow a very logical process: 1. Open a Window of type Trend. 2. Double click on the background and then in the Plot Area tab, browse in the Tag you wish to display. 3. Edit the time span and any other properties you wish to change. 4. Save the trend window in the directory you have created for Trends etc. 5. Open the trend and it will automatically trend the historical and/or real-time values in the same window. Figure showing a Trend Window and the dialogue used to configure its properties 36

38 Configuring Alarm Windows Alarm Windows are another form of Window that are specifically designed to display alarm data from a particular AlarmList Agent. As previously explained you again follow the following logical steps to display the list of Alarms. 1. Open a Window of type Alarm. 2. Double click on the grey area at the bottom of the window. 3. Select the AlarmList you wish to display, although the defaultalarmagent is fine for now. 4. Configure the properties of this window, such as colours, data to display etc. 5. Save the Alarm window in the directory you have created for Alarms etc. Navigating between Windows Navigating between windows, apart from using the Window menu commands can be done using the Execute Command Behaviour. If for example you wished to close the mimic and open the trend do the following: 1. Create a mimic that had two buttons on (you can do this from any graphical object). 2. Add an Execute Command Behaviour to each button. 3. In the Execute command behaviour edit dialogue box select a. Command - Open Window b. Window Type Mimic (or Trend for the second button) c. Browse in the filename, excluding the path. d. Save the mimic and toggle the view and you would then be able to switch between the Mimic and the Trend from this navigation mimic. Note: We spoke in the beginning about excluding path names when browsing in files from such behaviours as the one just described. If you have put the mimics and trends say on another machine then all you need to do in the Adroit setup is put that path name in the Adroit Path setting in the UI Preferences tab. 37

39 Setting up a Workspace In order to create a defined working area that would open up automatically on opening the UI you need to size and place the Windows logically on the User Interface. Then choose Save Workspace from the File Menu in the UI. This layout will then be the one that opens up ion this machine when you start the UI. Figure showing a typical Workspace with mimics opening in an area and navigation bars configured to toggle between the trend and alarm windows in the bottom area 38

40 CONCLUSION The rest of Adroit is just about building on what we have covered in this guide and then understanding which Agents what with your data and which graphical behaviours you need to achieve a desired visual result. You are now ready to continue your own journey into this great product. Other resources that will help you along the way are: 1. The Training Manual. 2. Technical Description Document 3. Context sensitive on-line help. 4. Knowledge base (on the website). 5. Adroit Help desk on [email protected] 39