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How to Determine Number of Alarmable Tags in DeltaV

Hello, 

We are beginning an Alarm Management Project per ISA 18.2. 

I need to determine the total number of configured alarms on the systems for a cost estimated from alarm consultant. We have alarms configured for AI, DI, and logical conditions alarms. 

Any help on this question. 

Thank you, 

6 Replies

  • Bulk edit will be your best friend here. If you are employing classes extensively this should be much easier, otherwise you may be at risk undercounting. I only mention this because you say you have "logical conditions" alarms which could be configured as a DI_SOFT or something similar and may have some customized alarms configured. You can build a format file that looks at all possible alarm names in the system and export things like alarm limits for analog values and whether or not the alarms are enabled (.ENAB). Any modules that don't have an alarm that matches your format file will return NULL in the csv that is generated which should help you identify which class each of your modules belong to e.g. a discrete input will not have a HI_HI_ALM. If that doesn't sound doable start with building a format file for each module class that you are interested in.
  • Look at DeltaV Explorer, if you haven't done this already, and click Applications > System Alarm management. In 13.3.1 at least there's a selection under "File" for "reports" - you will see a wide variety of options for gathering your alarm data. If you are running an earlier version, you can still export to XML files that can be analyzed for alarm count.
  • You could use System Alarm Management (SAM) to pick the alarms and then print to XML and then use that file to check the enables. I'm not sure when the print to XML option was added but it's in v12 and v13 and this is probably the best option to use.

    If you are using v13 this is also very easy with Bulk Edit excercise as you can export all the alarms with the product supplied Module_Alarm.fmt (will export every alarm as a row regardless of the alarm name).

    If you are using non-v13 it becomes a little more difficult with Bulk Edit as the format file needs to match every alarm in the system to be able to pull out the config:

    • which if you are exclusively using classes everywhere you can do this because you can't add custom alarms at the instances
    • If you are not using classes you run the risk of having someone add an alarm that doesn't fit the bulk edit format.
  • In reply to chip.burge:

    chip.burge said:
    Bulk edit will be your best friend here. If you are employing classes extensively this should be much easier, otherwise you may be at risk undercounting. I only mention this because you say you have "logical conditions" alarms which could be configured as a DI_SOFT or something similar and may have some customized alarms configured. You can build a format file that looks at all possible alarm names in the system and export things like alarm limits for analog values and whether or not the alarms are enabled (.ENAB). Any modules that don't have an alarm that matches your format file will return NULL in the csv that is generated which should help you identify which class each of your modules belong to e.g. a discrete input will not have a HI_HI_ALM. If that doesn't sound doable start with building a format file for each module class that you are interested in.

    Thank you chip.burge.

    I am new to Bulk Edit. How do you use this tool? We have class and non-class base modules. 

    I would like to extract all the alarms from the system and then filter what I need. 

  • Simplest way is to use the ‘System Alarm Management’ utility and the ‘output to XML’ option.  You need to do this Area by Area.  You can then read the XML files into Excel, merge the data from the individual Areas into one table and use Excel functions to count the number of individual tags and alarms.  I’ve done this many times and it is quite easy.
     
    Neil Brown
     
  • In reply to DCS Newbie:

    From 30,000 feet: Bulk edit extracts data and creates or overwrites data from/into the DeltaV database. The format file describes what type of database object to modify and its relevant parameters that you choose. To create a format file from DeltaV explorer go to file -> format specification -> new or edit depending on if you want to create a specification from scratch or modify a given Emerson file respectively. Modules or IO channels are the most commonly used object types in project type work. Once you have selected what type of object you will modify you can pick an example object from the subtype menu if applicable to list all parameters available for export. Once you've added all the fields you desire the format file create the format file so that it is available for custom exports. Creating a custom format file is optional if you plan on using one of Emerson's built in files. From File -> Export-> User Defined you select what database objects to query in your export. The two options here are children of selected components and search results. Children of selected components starts from the node that you currently have selected in DeltaV explorer before you opened the user defined export dialog and gives you the option of selecting any objects below that specific object. The select all command will recursively select all objects available in the dialog. If that does not suit your needs use the find command which can pinpoint select one or many database objects based on your search criteria. As an example if you wanted all the control modules you could select control module from the menu and use the wildcard * as your search criteria to return all control modules. With your target objects selected pick your format file and export. Hopefully you don't have many other database clients as the export will tie up the database. A csv file with all the fields in your format file and all the rows from your database object selections will be generated in the location that you specify.

    That being said generating a report from the System Alarm Management tool is probably the right call here as it will easily create a report to load into excel where you can sort and filter to suit your needs.