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Main functions
Integrated development system
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The peculiar software architecture of
PlantView
3 is such that the Developing environment includes the RunTime module so that any change or new element in the supervision
can be tested immediately in the same software environment.
The project realization becomes quick and effective with a great saving in time and costs.
No development licence is required.
Once the design and test phase are completed, the runtime-only module will let the final user
to access only the operations he is concerned with. All commands can be password protected (if required)
in order to guarantee the maximum safety.
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Graphic Editor
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PlantView
3 has a really powerful integrated Graphic Editor, with
all the most advanced graphic features and very effective.
The Toolbox lists all the objects that can be placed on the graphic
pages, among them the basic objects are:
- Line
- Polygon or polyline
- Rectangle and rounded rectangle
- Circle/ellipse
- Button/Label
- Arcs and Pies
- Text
and the advanced objects are:
- Label and buttons
- Clock
- Current User label
- Trend and profiles
- Alarm Log and danger objects
- Gauges
- Tables
- Video
The Graphic Editor includes all the most advanced graphic function like: rotate,
flip,
align, spacing, zoom, import / export and much more. It also allows to import
BitMap or Jpeg images and export the graphic pages as a bitmap, to be printed or sent or used as a documentation.
The basic objects can be used individually or assembled in groups in
order to create more complex objects. Every object, of any form, can
be rendered dynamic in order to respond in different ways to the
events that take place in the field or in connection with variations
in the data read from databases in various formats.
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Symbols and supersymbols library
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PlantView
3 provides to the designer a wide library of graphic images which can be inserted in the supervision pages,
but it is not limited to that. It is possible to create a customized library, where
the designer can add, in specific categories, objects or objects groups he made, including:
- graphic image
- associated dynamic behavior
- associated VBA code
This way the supervision realization becomes extremely easy and quick, avoiding loss of time
and useless repeating.
The special Supersymbols library allows the generation of
object arrays at once, including the creation of the corresponding
tags in the tags database. The Supersymbol dramatically reduces the
time for supervision pages management, since the changes in the
"master" symbol will be automatically reproduced on the
derived objects.
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Multilingual texts and
development environment
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PlantView
3 HMI-SCADA development environment is in English as a default
language.
The development environment can be customized in any language thanks
to Unicode support that allows you to use several different alphabets
including e.g. Chinese, Cyrillic, Arab, etc.
Also texts in the supervision pages can be made multilingual and can
be translated in real time.
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Alarms management
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PlantView
3 has different objects for the alarms reperesentation, mainly two kind of alarms management:
- The Data Access alarm log and the Alarm&Event alarms log objects. They both keep a list of all
the events which took place in the plant allowing a complete control
- The Alarm "behavior", which can be associated to any graphic object
This last object, following the ISA rules, will assume one of the 4 different behavior according to its status:
Anyway, colors can be freely set by the designer
| Active |
Red flashing
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| Acknowledged |
Red (steady)
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| Returned |
Green (steady)
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| Returned not Acknowledged |
Green flashing
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In the configuration phase the anomalous events are classified in different categories, corresponding to
different levels: simple notification, warning for the operator or real alarm situation.
Each level can be associated with a sound signal that will be repeated
until the alarm is acknowledged, returned or the operator silenced it.
The Alarm Logs can be placed, even many times, in any page of the project. The designer has a great freedom
in these objects configuration, including choices for fonts and colors, command buttons, list type, group filtering,
gravity colors code and filtering and much more.
The alarm lists can be configured in order to be compliant with
ISA-F1A rules.
The collection of events so classified, together with extra information like event type, alarm description, date and time
of occurence, tag values, group belonging to, can be saved on a file or to database for further analysis through
the Alarm History module.
A very useful tool for the final user is the integrated help/info system: a simple click on an alarm line
in the alarm log can open a PDF (Acrobat) file corresponding to the selected event, containing indications for the operator
on the action to undertake when the event takes place.
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Danger object
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In order to complete tha alarm
management, Plant view 3 includes two graphical objects, the Data
Access Danger object and the Alarms&Events Dager object, according
to the kind of server used as alarm source. The Danger objects change
their state when at least one alarm (generic or filtered)
occurs and may flash or change color to
notify about the presence of anomalies.
The Danger objects warn the final user with a clear and immediate
notification of an alarm occurrence.
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Gauge object
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Ideal for the immediate visualization, the Gauge object has a double feature: it shows the value of an input
tag in an intuitive way and can be used to set the value (setpoint) of a correlated output tag with great ease.
It is available in different graphic looks with a wide range of configurable parameters in order to be customized
according designer's needs.
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Historical trends and Data Loggers
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PlantView
(version 3.2 and upper) supplies a powerful tool for process time
analysis, really flexible and complete. Historical trends and Data
Loggers allow a precise mamangement of the most significal data of a
plant, a machine or a building, both archived data or real time data.
The procedure is completely customizable, it can manage a big amount
of data and cover a wide time interval. The software includes some
utilities for archives maintenance (Microsoft SQL server /Microsoft Access / MySql /Oracle)
and for data export to other applications (i.e. Excel)
To optimize efficiency and performances, the data acquisition and
visualization are shared between two applications:
- FastDL (Fast Data Logger), whose main job is to exchange data
with the field through specific OPC servers and collect data that
will be archived in database of different formats, according to
designer's choices, or made available in real time through
the OLE DB technology.
- Plant View 3, that shows data managed by FastDL, giving the
final user many analysis tools (time navigation, zoom, ruler,
phase visualization, print, export to csv files, etc.) and a great
freedom in chart configuration.
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Dynamic trends
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For the supervision activity
PlantView
3 offers the opportunity to introduce simple, configurable dynamical trend objects, useful to analyse
tags variations over short time periods (days - hours - minutes).
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Weekly scheduler
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Very useful for weekly events scheduling, this object with a simple and
easy to use interface is perfect for building automation applications,
to schedule light switch on and off or heating and cooling systems work.
The weekly scheduler allows to set up for every days a number of time
intervals when the selected signals will be set on or off, it can be
temporarily disable for maintenance works and can allow to the final
user a fine tuning of the scheduling.
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Cam video
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Plant View can easily become a video
surveillance tool including in supervision pages frames where real
time images from a video camera are show.
The images data sources can belong to the "Video Capture Sources"
category, including drivers of devices like WebCam, TV Tuner,
video cameras, etc. or any other device whose drivers belongs to
the CLSID VideoInputDeviceCategory.
Axis video cameras are also supported, connected in an Ethernet
network through an IP address.
It is also possible to capture one or more video frames and save it as
a picture in different formats (bmp or jpg).
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Path object
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It is possible to associate to a graphic object a fully configurable path
that it will move along according to the selected options (continuous movement, step movement, cycling or stopping
at the last point, circular, and so on).
Since the path object is available through the integrated Microsoft VBA, there is a wide range of
settings and management through VBA code.
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Profile object
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It is an object which can trace the linear changes of different tags
related to the same process, i.e. the temperature profile all along a stripping column or in a furnace.
This object can be easily configurated and is surprisingly effective.
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Integrated documentation
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Any object, graphic or text or a line in the alarm log, can be associated to
a PDF (Acrobat) file, so that, clicking on it, the related file will be opened, making useful information available.
The information can be suggestion for the diagnostic, schemas or picture, user or maintenance manuals
or any kind of document in PDF format.
The management, updating and maintenance of these files is made through Adobe Acrobat.
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Cross Reference
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It is the essential tool to keep the whole supervision under control:
once the tags database and the graphic files that compose a project (or a part of a project) have been defined,
it is possible:
- to find which objects in the supervision are associated to a specific tag of the tags database
and see them immediately in the project graphic pages by a simple click
- to list the tags associated to graphic objects in a project or part of it or in a specific page,
including object placement (coordinates)
- to find which object in the supervision are also VBA objects
- to know if there are object associated to tags not present in the database
The results can be seen immeditely in the development environment or saved on a file
(text file or PDF format) to be used as project documentation or to be printed.
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Touch Screen support
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it is realized by numerical or alphanumeric virtual keybords
appearing on the screen each time the user must input values, type or reset a password.
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Integrated VBA
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The integration of Visual Basic for Application in
PlantView
is a very powerful tool for the supervision designer: it allows to expand
its already great capabilities in an easy and quick way by using the VB language.
Some examples of the features which can be implemented:
- to modify the properties of an object such as its position, color or other characteristics of graphic
objects; cause images to appear or disappear according to the value of field tags or following specific
events;
- to associate either to user actions (for instance, a click on an object in the synoptic) or to events
(for instance, the change in value of a variable) the appearance of
customized graphic dialog boxes
through which the final user can interact with the field;
- to create internal variables that can behave dynamically, by attributing to them the values resulting
from mathematical or logical operations among other variables;
- to add to the supervision Active X objects, audio-video animations or specific programs, like for instance
a recipe editor that allows you to create, modify, save and recover default recipes from a pre-constituted
list;
- to create synoptics in real time, by loading dynamic objects whose characteristics
(quantity, position, graphic appearance, possibility of interaction with the user)
can be defined according to several parameters (for instance, loading them from a database);
- to cause objects to move along pre-arranged trajectories (or path configured at runtime)
following events or user actions;
- to save dynamic behavior objects and their associated VBA code as models,
so that you will be able to re-use them when and where necessary;
These are only examples, but we do not want to put any limit to the designer fantasy!
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