"AOIs" in EcoStruxure Control Expert?

[1sarina]

I'm a newbie on the EcoStruxure Control Expert platform. One thing I'm having trouble figuring out is how I would implement this software's version of what I would call an AOI in the Studio5000 world.

Is a DFB (Derived Function Block) more or less the equivalent to an AOI in Rockwell land?

Does Schneider (or anyone else) offer anything like PlantPAx AOIs for this software?

[Sam69]

Since Schneider's HMI products are a series of acquisitions none of them integrate the way Factory Talk and Logix do. All of the blocks in the block library are for control only - they don't consider the HMI interface. It is a very different philosophy from PAx, little bits that do one thing well as opposed to behemoths that try to do everything for everybody. Unity has at least 10 different PID blocks which are all a bit different depending on their unique purpose, whereas PIDE has 150 DMV Now Services configuration options so instead of selecting the appropriate block you figure out the combination of options that are going to work. I've never seen any blocks from Schneider that integrated with the HMI, it is totally up to the end user to design a work flow for importing tags from Unity to the HMI software tag database, create the HMI software alarm tags, etc.

[williamsylvester]

If you are looking for just the AOI link Schneider does have their GPL( General Purpose Library V2 is the current one located on exchange.se.com) and have had them for a while. The main difference between Rockwell and Schneider is not all Schneider blocks are open source. I believe you can still refine and debug the logic but no edit capability. As far as the HMI to PLC Link your best bet will be an AVEVA product mainly System Platform and Plant SCADA. I can confirm they have GPL HMI objects for System Platform that work out of the box. I would assume they have the same with Plant SCADA since it is part of their Hybrid DCS product (Process Expert). As for Edge and InTouch they support Archestra graphics so you can port the graphics from system platform over but there will be some hoops to jump through since System Platform is object based and InTouch and Edge are Tag based systems. If you want to know more feel free to contact me at william.sylvester@interstates.com