RA Faceplate Builder v1.

User Manual

Allottware CC
Reg No: 2004/028046/23
P.O. Box 12611, Vorna Valley, 1686, South Africa

Tel: +27 82 809 3262

Fax: +27 11 315 1464
Email: rallott@mweb.co.za
Web: www.allottware.co.za

Managing Members:
Reuben Allott
User Manual RA Faceplate Builder v1.1

CONTENTS

1 INTRODUCTION....................................................................................................................................... 3
1.1 OPENING THE FACEPLATE BUILDER ..................................................................................................... 3
1.2 DEVICE TYPES ...................................................................................................................................... 4
2 CREATE A NEW FACEPLATE............................................................................................................... 6
3 SELECT PAGES......................................................................................................................................... 7
4 TREND PAGE............................................................................................................................................. 8
5 HELP PAGE................................................................................................................................................ 9
6 BUILDING THE FACEPLATE .............................................................................................................. 10
7 OPENING A FACEPLATE ..................................................................................................................... 11
7.1 USING SCRIPT ..................................................................................................................................... 11
7.2 USING THE RA WIZARD ..................................................................................................................... 11
8 EXAMPLE FACEPLATE........................................................................................................................ 12

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1 INTRODUCTION
1.1 Opening the Faceplate Builder

The RA Faceplate Builder is part of the RA Add-On for WinCC. Open it from the WinCC
Explorer:

The Faceplate Builder works in conjunction with the pictures and scripts generated by the RA
Navigation Builder. It provides a simple way to implement faceplate technology that includes
standard alarm and trend pages, a notes page for user comments and an HTML-based help
page for describing your faceplate to the operators who use them.

NOTE:
To use the Faceplate Builder effectively you must have a good working understanding of
using Function Blocks and instance Data Blocks in a Step7 project, and of using structured
tags in WinCC. The next section gives a brief overview of this, but much detail is left out.

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1.2 Device Types

The faceplate system is designed to work with tag structures that are created by an OS
compilation of function blocks from Step7.

A typical integrated Step7/WinCC project will use Function Blocks (FBs) in Step7 to
encompass the different device types (Direct Online Motor, Variable Speed Drive, PA
Instrument etc).

Here we see a selection of function

blocks for different device types.

The selected FB is the standard

PID controller from the Step7
library.

Instance Data Blocks (DBs) in Step7 are used to represent individual devices of certain
device types.

Here we see a selection of instance

data blocks representing individual
instances of certain device types.

The selected DB is an instance of

the PID controller shown above.

When you perform an OS compilation of your project, the Symbolic Name of the FB
becomes the name of the tag structure in WinCC, and the comment field of the DB is used as
the device description on the faceplates.

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The Symbolic Name of the function block is used

as the structured tag name in WinCC. This also
forms part of the faceplate picture names.

The comment field for each data block is used as

the device description in the faceplates in WinCC.

The Faceplate Builder makes use of the following text tags generated by Step7 for each
device:

Tag Field Description

#blocktype The tag structure name (same as the FB name in Step7, “CONT_C” in the
example above)
#comment Description of the device (eg: Motor 1, Pump-003)

NOTE:
You can use the Faceplate Builder with structured tag types that you have created manually
and not with Step7. You must just make sure that you include the two tags shown above, as
these are used in runtime to determine which faceplates to open for which devices.

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2 CREATE A NEW FACEPLATE

All structured tag types are listed

in the drop-down box.

Select one of them to edit the

faceplate for that device.

You can use this to create a manual faceplate that is not linked to a
tag structure.

Enter a name for the faceplate. You will have to write your own
script to open the faceplates you have created in this way.

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3 SELECT PAGES

You can set various cosmetic

settings like the faceplate size and
appearance of the page tabs.

The lower section is for

configuring the different pages you
want on the faceplate. Alarms,
Trends, Notes and Help are
standard pages that can be added
and do not require any configuring
in Graphics Designer.

You can add as many pages as you like. For each page you must supply a caption to appear
on the faceplate and the name of the PDL picture file that will be used for that page.

The following four standard pages can be added to your faceplate:

Page Description
Alarms An alarm page that will be filtered to the device
Trends A trend page for displaying analog values for the device
Notes A notepad where the operator can write any comments about the device
Help An HTML help file is displayed describing the faceplate

If you add a custom page to the faceplate, unlike the standard pages listed above, you will
have to configure them yourself. The builder will create the blank PDL picture files for you.
You can then open and edit them with the WinCC Graphics Designer.

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4 TREND PAGE

If you add the “Trends” standard page the following will become available:

Use the add/remove buttons to add trend

pens to the trend page.

Double click in the columns to change

the pen colours, ranges and tag and
archive names.

In the tag name only add the last part of

the tag name, including the period.

In the archive name add the name of the

archive in the Tag Logging editor that
contains the tags to be trended.

When you add the tags to the tag logging

archive do not change the names of the
archive tags, or the faceplate will not be
able to find the archive tags.

In runtime the trends page will

automatically load the selected pens

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5 HELP PAGE

If you add the “Help” standard page the following will become available:

At first there is no help file for the device. The

standard page is displayed as shown here.

Click here to create a specific help file for this

faceplate.

A blank template file is generated.

You can delete the file if you no longer want it, or

You can edit it directly with MS Word.

Click on the refresh button after editing with word to

see the updated help file.

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6 BUILDING THE FACEPLATE

When you have fully configured your faceplate, you must build it into the project:

Click on the “Build” button.

The progress bar will move to the right.

The faceplate has been built and can now be used

in the WinCC project.

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7 OPENING A FACEPLATE
7.1 Using Script

The above script will open the faceplate for the device “RA/XY-002”.

The script knows which faceplate to open because it evaluates the contents of the tag named
“RA/XY-002.#blocktype”. This tag and its value are generated by Step7 during the OS
Compilation, and contain the name of the FB, the tag structure in WinCC and thus the PDL
picture name generated by the Faceplate Builder.

The description of the device displayed in the title bar of the faceplate is read from the tag
“RA/XY-002.#comment”.

7.2 Using the RA Wizard

You can use the RA Wizards to generate the script required to open a faceplate. This is
described in the main document “RA Add-On for WinCC v1.1”.

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8 EXAMPLE FACEPLATE

The following example is taken from the RA Demo Project. The faceplate is for a simple
Analog Input device type, named “RA_AI”.

General status indication for the device Trend page for the current value

Filtered alarm page Notes that can be edited and saved

HTML help file can be added to describe the

functionality of the faceplate.

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