Replacing old project

[ziadrached]

Hello,
Recently i had to upgrade a certain project. i got a backup copy of the costumer PC. and did my upgrades on a different PC . after that i created a backup of my new upgraded project so i can deploy it on the customer PC.
how can i replace the old existing project on the customer PC without deleting any old archive?
another question is regarding the messaging system. In WinCC there is a certain place that is dedicated to write all the messages and to assign the bit variable to it, it makes working with messages and alarms easier .
In zenon the only way that i found is thru the variable list so i have to assign a name for every message and include a limit so i can get my alarm,
Is there any other way?
best regards.

[markclemens]

Hello,
Recently i had to upgrade a certain project. i got a backup copy of the costumer PC. and did my upgrades on a different PC . after that i created a backup of my new upgraded project so i can deploy it on the customer PC.
how can i replace the old existing project on the customer PC without deleting any old archive?
best regards.

you can restore the backup on the customer's PC, if it is in the existing workspace on the same PC where the runtime is running now, the directory for the runtime files will not change, and you should not loose any archive files. What you can do, is create a copy of the runtime data folder (named exactly as the PC name) and then restore your project in a new workspace, create the runtime files, and copy the runtime data directory into the new runtime directory (the pc-name folder should be parallel to the RT folder)

[markclemens]

another question is regarding the messaging system. In WinCC there is a certain place that is dedicated to write all the messages and to assign the bit variable to it, it makes working with messages and alarms easier .
In zenon the only way that i found is thru the variable list so i have to assign a name for every message and include a limit so i can get my alarm,
Is there any other way?
best regards.

what you can do is, create a user defined datatype where the limit is already configured as an alarm. Each variable based on this datatype, will already have the appropriate alarm settings at the limit, inherited from the datatype.

If you then have a list with the variable name, and the according alarmtext e.g. in MS excel, it is an easy job to put the alarmtext at the according variable, by using a small VBA macro in MS excel.

Another way would be to use a reaction matrix, to centrally define the alarm status, and text (either static or by making use of a dynamic limit text, where the text can come from e.g. a string variable) and use this centrally defined reaction matrix for all the variables of your choice (using multi-select) instead of using a limit. A reaction matrix can be a limit with more possibilities to react on. (e.g. by evaluating the I-BIT status of the variable, which indicates a communication interruption to the PLC)

A very elegant way of having easy alarm texts, is by using dynamic limit texts with an index variable.

you would have a fixed text, followed by a ";" than a text with a @ in front, and then the variable which contains the index number. At runtime, at the moment of alarm generation (with indexVar value 25) the "$fixedtext; @alarmkeyword%indexVar" could be replaced with "fixedtext pump error tank 1". the "pump error tank 1" would come from the language table with the entry @alarmkeyword25

You can also find more information in the online help!

[ziadrached]

hello Mark,
regarding the alarms i tried the reaction matirx, it somehow worked but had some problems.
consider that i have a variable word (message1) that correspond to my alarm values, the byte is bit oriented meaning for example
bit 0 correspond to Emergency Stop
bit 1 correspond to Circuit breaker tripped
bit 2 ....
what is happening is that when i have bit0 =1 (message1 value = 1) then i get the alarm,
when an additional bit1 = 1 (message1 value = 3 ) i dont get the alarm for the corresponding bit1(circuit breaker tripped) i only get this message if bit0=0 (message1=2) .
it seems that the matrix is value orriented and not bit orriented ,so is there anything else that should be done or im i missing something?
best regards.

[markclemens]

the reaction matrix actually is bit oriented, however it stops evaluating the rest of the conditions, whenever it finds one condition which is true.

One way you can handle this, is split your alarms into single boolean variables, in the PLC. (reading 8 boolean, or one byte covering the same offset does not make any difference in regard to communication speed / bandwidth usage)

Another way would be to split up your byte on the PC, using straton. straton offers several pre-defined function blocks to split up variables.

You could also take a look at multi-remas. Here you can define sub-states, however this will get complicated if you want to cover each condition.

[ziadrached]

thats why im saying that WinCC has an easier messaging interface, i hope that in future editions you would include something like WinCC
in WinCC we used to group all the messages in dbles words
so if i have to split every dword(1 tag) to 32 variables bits( 32 tags) that would be a problem for SCADAs that have more that 500 messages

[markclemens]

I must say, that I don't know the messaging system of WinCC, and maybe we are also talking about different things here?

I don't quite understand what you mean with the limit of 500 messages. zenon has no real limit on the amount of alarm or event list "messages", other than the amount of RAM installed on the PC running zenon. It is no problem to have say 100.000 variables configured as an alarm.

Maybe the PDIAG (Alarm_S) support of zenon is interesting for you?

[ziadrached]

hello mark
i know that internally there is no limits for the alrams
i dont know if im making myself clear ,ill try to explain
we usually do all our alarm managment in the plc , each alarm in the plc generates a single bit, these bits are grouped together as dwords, and the alarms in the scada system is generated from these bits.
i know that using limits in zenon is possible, but we preffer that everything to be controlled from the plc.

in zenon to set an alarm a variable corresponding to each bit should be included in the variable list so each bit will occupy a tag, and we have purchased a 1024 tag license , so the alarms are occupying more that half our tag license limit.
so by grouping the bits into dwords in the plc and then degrouping into singles bits in scada we can manage to reduce the tags occupied by the messages
I hope i have made myself clear .
best regards

[markush]

Hello ziadrached!

I see that your 'problem' is that you want to save license costs. This is not really our intention. Our license fees are oriented on the amount of external tags. This is our business model. Changing that business model and allowing the bundling of alarm variables would mean that we would earn less money and this means automatically that we would have to reduce one of the following:
- Functionality (caused by fewer developers)
- Quality (caused by less quality people)

I don't think that is that what you want to achieve. I suppose that you pay a fair price for that what you get. Our HMI/SCADA system is used all over the world by very well known companies and by small and medium sized companies as well. They know our licensing politics which hasn't been changed over the last 15 years. It might happen that other systems are sometimes cheaper (sometimes because of the bundling of Alarm variables), and sometimes they will be more expensive.
Our advantage is that we have a very fine granularity of TAG steps: 256 TAGs, 512 TAGs, 1024 TAGs, 2048 TAGs, 4096 TAGs ... and so on. Most of our competitors do not offer you this variety. If you have more than 2000 Tags you have to by 16.000 Tags which costs you much more than a 4000 TAG zenon license.
If you reach your limit of 1024 TAGs please contact your zenon sales engineer. He can help you to find a cost effective solution and a cheap upgrade to the next zenon package.

[ziadrached]

Thank you Markush for clarifying this .
But actually it is not a matter of saving license costs, it s just a matter of project planning and simplicity in working with alarms.
As I already said we are used to work with Siemens WinCC, and this is our first project with zenOn , before acquring the license we made our tag estimation(as we used to do with WinCC) and our total tags were about 600 so thats why we purchased the 1024 license, we didnt take into consideration that every alarm should occupy one tag in zenon.
so thats why i asked if there is something do be done , cause i'm not quiet familier with zenon, and thought that there is a way that i dont know about.
but now we will take this into consideration when ordering the licenses.

and may i suggest some ideas that may be added to future versions
it would nice if in the variable list , groups folder could be created my the user ,example a group for Pressure variables other for temperatures other for alarm bits etc... this will make navigation easier.
best regards.