External Moderators tmoulder Posted August 19, 2010 External Moderators Report Share Posted August 19, 2010 Hi again! When using Sting Library values in a list-of-text variable, you have to choose each entry one... by one...by one... That's really slow going when you've got over 200 to do... It would be great if we could choose to use a string value, then highlight a range within the string library, and insert them all sequentially into the variable. Something to consider. Thanks! TM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Emil Posted August 20, 2010 Report Share Posted August 20, 2010 Hi Tim, Sounds like a good idea. I'll pass it ot our R&D. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Salkie Posted August 25, 2010 Report Share Posted August 25, 2010 Can you get away with just using a "Text" variable, and setting its value to an "Indirect Select Library String"? That won't let you touch the value and modify it (select a value from a list), but if you're just looking to _display_ a value from the string library, it works fine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
External Moderators tmoulder Posted August 25, 2010 Author External Moderators Report Share Posted August 25, 2010 Can you get away with just using a "Text" variable, and setting its value to an "Indirect Select Library String"? That won't let you touch the value and modify it (select a value from a list), but if you're just looking to _display_ a value from the string library, it works fine. Hi Phil, Yes and no. I wanted to create an active alarm display with a change of colors based on the status of the machine - green for no alarms, red for alarm text. You can't do that with a regular text variable. I did do exactly what you describe for the alarm history though. And since there isn't an option right now (and I don't have 2 days to copy text entries one by one into the variable), I did something similar for the active alarm window. Since I'm using a background bitmap, I set the background of the HMI screen to black, made a text variable in red, and used the hide operand to conceal the variable if no alarm is active. This creates a window on the screen that is blank if there are no alarms, and displays in red if there is an alarm. Not ideal, but workable. I could have set the background to green, but no text would have displayed ("No Alarms Active"), and I'd rather have it blank than use a color to indicate something with no expression of what that color means. Thanks for the tip, though Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
External Moderators tmoulder Posted August 25, 2010 Author External Moderators Report Share Posted August 25, 2010 By the way, the date/time stamps on the alarm history above are a particularly nice tidbit that has been around for years, but I never realized the usefulness of until this project. I used to put the date and time from SI into MI and display it in a couple of ways, either directly as numerical display or converting to string first. Either way was clumsy and used alot of operands. Now I use the UTC time functions. Use RTC to UTC FB to store each stamp into a single DW, then use the Display UTC variable to UTC variable to display it without any ambiguity (MI) or extra work (ASCII). Nice feature! It's embarassing it hid below my radar for so long. TM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
External Moderators tmoulder Posted August 25, 2010 Author External Moderators Report Share Posted August 25, 2010 And before it comes up, I know about the OS Alarms feature, and have used it before. I've even instructed a couple of people in how to use it. It's a great feature, but honestly, it's just not to my personal taste. On this one, I prefer to "roll my own", so to speak. TM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Salkie Posted August 25, 2010 Report Share Posted August 25, 2010 In regards to the alarm screen, I've done much the same - built a system allowing some alarms to auto-reset, while others must be acknowledged, has status bits for each alarm showing unacknowledged, trigger present, and alarm state (very useful for triggering LEDs - flash on unacknowledged, solid once silenced but still present). It has scrollable alarm screens showing alarm text (with the text variable) and status (that's where I change the colors based on trigger state and acknowledgement, since each status field only has two text states and two colors) and one showing alarm text and the alarm's time stamp. I also show the top three alarms at the bottom of the main display. This screen and my digital I/O diagnostics pages were the reason for getting R&D to add a .csv import to the string table editor - trying to type in long alarm lists and lists of I/O names into the original editor was not much fun, especially when I already had the data in a gnumeric (open source) spreadsheet. (The excel import had some unusual restrictions, including using hidden excel-specific data and not being able to import a line which hadn't previously been exported, making it tough to add new lines from the spreadsheet...) Seems like great minds think alike! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
External Moderators tmoulder Posted August 25, 2010 Author External Moderators Report Share Posted August 25, 2010 I've used a similiar method when creating part number selection screens, although I use data tables to store the information relative to the part number. One thing I do differently is to replace the buttons along the side with a scroll bar, to make moving through the list easier. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cara Bereck Levy Posted October 20, 2010 Report Share Posted October 20, 2010 Hi guys Tim, you'll see the feature you requested in an official released version during Q1, 2011. It will show up in an Intermediate Version sometime before that. Thanks for the input! >When using Sting Library values in a list-of-text variable, you have to choose each entry one... by one...by one... That's really slow going when you've got over 200 to do... It would be great if we could choose to use a string value, then highlight a range within the string library, and insert them all sequentially into the variable< Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
External Moderators tmoulder Posted October 20, 2010 Author External Moderators Report Share Posted October 20, 2010 Thanks Cara, that's great news! TM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
External Moderators tmoulder Posted October 20, 2010 Author External Moderators Report Share Posted October 20, 2010 On that subject, haven't seen any new intermediates in quite a while. Is the update cycle moving that fast, or has the location changed? TM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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