DCF ION7650

[Philippe_Morel]

For a client I had to program two identical ION7650 (370e).

I programmed in the first ION7650 with Designer (PME7.2.2).

I then saved the DCF file of this fist ION7650 to my PC with ION Setup 3.0.14094.02.

I then sent this DCF file to the second ION7650 with ION Setup.

It worked.

But...

The modules are randomly spread in groups when I open the second ION7650 in Designer.

So it is almost impossible to continue programming in the second ION7650, because now it is a real mess in Designer. Also my notes were gone.

Therefore I restored its original DCF file and I had to redo all the programming for the second ION7650.

Did I do something wrong? Or is this a bug that needs to be fixed?

(N.B.: the file name is 7650_FAC_V3.6.0.0.0.dcf and I believe the firmware version of both ION7650 is 371e.)

[JamesAZZO]

Very common oversight but easy to solve.

Unfortunately the meter itself doesn't save the folder structure or Designer layout. So when you paste the new DCF, it still has the old template referenced and will load that one and all of your graphical components from the PC stored cfg file.

You need to go into the cfg folder (inside Config of ION Enterprise folder I believe from memory here) and grab the cfg file of 7650 you first did and copy it, and rename to the second one's name (overwrite the initial one created when you first opened up in Designer).  Then the next time you open it up it will all load as per the first one.

Whallah.

[Philippe_Morel]

Thank you James,

I'll try this.

I already had a quick look, I think the cfg file is in the folder C:\Program Files (x86)\Schneider Electric\Power Monitoring Expert\config\diagrams\nd.

[JamesAZZO]

Yup! That's the one.

[jimbradley · Accepted solution]

Hi Philippe,

Your work flow makes sense and is probably the easiest way to do things but as James pointed out there are a few tricks:

The layout of a device in Designer is not stored in the device, it is stored on the system.

When Designer firsts “opens” a meter it looks at a setup register in the device that indicates it’s default framework.

It then looks in the \system\diagram folders to find a matching Designer diagram file.

If it can not find one it creates a “default” diagram with modules placed in folders by type.

When the meter is closed in Designer the diagram file is written to \config\diagrams\nd\meter.name[serial number].cfg

The next time Designer opens a meter it will use this file for layout

So what has happened is that for your second meter because it was the first time Designer opened the meter it opened the default layout.  Then it noticed you had put in some new modules and Designer places them into a grouping object (same as a folder in Windows) called "Extra Modules" (name has changed over the years).

So to get the look in Designer for the second meter based on the first meter here is what I do:

Open the second meter in Designer.  You get all the new modules placed in the "Extra Modules" grouping object and not layed out at all.  Close the second meter in Designer. This creates a unique .cfg for that meter.

Open  \config\diagrams\nd and note the name of the file .cfg for both the first and second meter.  Make a copy of the first meter .cfg file.  Rename the second meter file to .cfg.old (or something like that), rename the copy of first meter .cfg to be second meter.cfg.  Re-open the second meter in Designer and it will use the .cfg file based on the layout of the first meter.

This sounds more complicated that it actually is.

If you are doing a lot of meters with same look you can change the register in the meter and create a folder in  \system\diagram thus generating anew "default" for you framework. This generally not worth doing.

Jim

[Yu_Diao]

Another way to do it (especially for a few meters): using Desginer to save the framwork as "fwn" file, which containts all the layout AND notes and do a "locked" paste into the new meters.