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Trend Station Automation (2 PHV applications, 6 Charts each)

Looking to see if anyone has accomplished this or can help me create a way to automatically perform this procedure

Here's our set up: two 50 Inch screens that are used as trend stations 

Procedure:

1. Operations opens up PHV 

2. Browses for the most used charts (6 of them) 

3. Stretches and positions each Chart 

4. Clicks File/ New instance to open up another PHV application for the second screen 

5. Browses for the most used charts (6 of them) 

6. Stretches and positions each Chart 

Problems:

1. Takes ops about 15 minutes to get the trends just right, which means they are distracted for about 15 minutes 

2. Makes Ops grumpy when we need to do windows updates/ hotfixes and must close down their station

I'm sure there has to be a way VIA schedule or a button using VBA to automate this so that the Computer Opens instances/ fits the charts. Not quite sure the best way to do it. 

Thanks Emerson Community!

Shamusk 

Shamusk
  • Andre Dicaire
    Looks like you have a dedicated View only Operator station managing these two screens as a Dial monitor? You are using DeltaV Operate, based on your comment about VBA?

    Are you using the combined E-CHART format or strictly trend?

    For a strictly Trend Screen presentation, I would forgo PHV and use Embedded CHARTs in two displays. You can populate the trends as you want in the displays and they will always come up as formated. You can even set these as your default displays on the two screens so that when the console boots up and autolaunches Operate and the two monitors provide your Trends.

    Now you have control and you can do things like toggle through a series of trend displays in a slide show format using the schedule.

    You could also create a Control Module for this console, such that you can control the content on these screens from other consoles. The module could have a string parameter that holds the name of the graphic for the MAIN1 display area. By monitoring this parameter of OnData Change, you can open the specified picture when the picture name parameter changes. This would allow you to provide a control on other consoles to operators to call up specific trend displays under various situations. Or enable disable the slide show by setting a specific picture name.

    With a trend picture you are not limited to 6 charts per monitor. And you can incorporate other display items, including an alarm list.

    In operate, the Embedded Trend supports 8 pens. In Live, it supports 10.

    Since PHV is a separate application, there is no way to manage the presentation of trends within the PHV Window. You can programmatically open PHV and call up to 6 chards using the command line interface via VBA or possibly a batch type script. Once open, maximizing the window and tiling the 6 charts is a two click action, but if you want the CHART arrangements to be different than tiled, you are back to positioning and sizing the windows by hand. There is no Save Layout option that saves the 6 specified CHARTs and their respective positioning in the window. The Command Line Interface does not have controls for where each CHART appears when opened.

    BOL provides details on the CLI, which allows you top open a specific PHV file and set its time parameters and such. This could be placed in a button on a display so that the PHV window and the 6 specific CHARTS are opened with one click, then maximize and tile Vertically to get a three by two layout or tile Horizontally to get a two by thee layout.

    Andre Dicaire

  • Shamusk

    In reply to Andre Dicaire:

    Andre,

    Yes that is correct, View only and using Delta V Operate. They do not use the events, only the trend. The embedded trend feature would work.... I will have to try this out and see if they like it.

    If not then perhaps I will Try making a button that maximizes and Tiles a two by three layout.

    Thanks So much for all the Awesome info!

    Shamusk
  • Shamusk

    In reply to Andre Dicaire:

    Here is what our graphic with embedded trend looks like so far. As far as I can see there is no way to get rid of the Y scale. Is that correct? 

  • Andre Dicaire

    In reply to Shamusk:

    It's been a while since I've worked with Operate but I believe you can hide the Y access scales. I'll see if I can get a station up and check.

    Andre Dicaire

  • Andre Dicaire

    In reply to Andre Dicaire:

    I pulled up an Embedded Trend to configure tags and I think the New Axis check boxes can be deselected to hide the Y axis EU values.

    The Y scales can be hidden on the pen properties dialog.  If you click both , the scale is on both sides.

    Andre Dicaire

  • John Rezabek

    In reply to Andre Dicaire:

    Just a caveat, embedded trends have been causing some issues with Operate in the recent releases (v13 & v14) - be sure you have applied a compatible hotfix which addresses the "Workspace" application's embedded trend challenges (mostly for us, random crashes when switching to a graphic with embedded trends).
    That said - this is a cool suggestion for a permanent trend page.
  • Michael Moody
    Shamusk,

    I setup dedicated embedded trends as others described some years back for one of our plants. They were struggling with similar issues that you describe. It was much easier to ensure the layout as desired and operators were happy. There is less flexibility to these than in PHV, but works well for fixed trends.
  • Shamusk

    In reply to Andre Dicaire:

    Thank You. LOL that took me way to long to figure out. They look much better now
  • Shamusk

    In reply to John Rezabek:

    Yes I agree. We are on 13.3.1 and I installed WS30 hotfix which causes Embedded Trends to crash. After talking to the GSC they recommended reverting back to WS29 and I have not had issues.
  • Shamusk

    In reply to Michael Moody:

    You are right, slightly less Flexibility. However if I can give operations the cool features that Andre was talking about (Slideshow/Change from other stations) I think it will be a great trade off and Operations will adopt this change very easily.
  • Andre Dicaire

    In reply to John Rezabek:

    John Rezabek. Why ruin a good story with facts... But you are right about the issue. I'm confident it will be addressed soon and in the mean time, the GSC has indicated hotfix versions to use with embedded Trends.

    Andre Dicaire

  • Andre Dicaire

    In reply to Michael Moody:

    Michael, I found that with DeltaV Operate Embedded Trends I had more control than with PHV. The trends allow you to remove and add pens dynamically and you have VBA to position and work with the Trend.

    With Live, the Embedded Trends do not allow you to add/remove/change the configured Pens, not directly. What I found was it can configure the Trend to variables or Text fields and by manipulating these, I can dynamically set the chart. So I'm creating a popup trend Contextual Display to use instead of PHV. That will eliminate the need to create a PHV chart for every faceplate. Instead, I'll pass the FB context and tag to the trend and use that to correctly set the variables to show the desired pen data and scales. From this one contextual display, I can have a button to open PHV E+CHART and add the pens so that one can investigate issues with the combined history data.

    In Live, you can open as many instances of a contextual display as you need and minimize them to the menu bar. No limit like in Operate. And this also avoids the situation with the PHV blocking the CHART because you already have 6 charts in a PHV window, the contextual Trend pop up will always be their, and you can minimize and recall the as needed.

    Also, Live embedded trends allow 10 pens. Not that we need that for Module Trend popups, but you have 10 independent Scales as well. I also like the overview trend bar where you can see 8 hours in that trend and a more detailed one hour view in the main area.

    PHV is still useful for the afore mentioned combined history data view and a few options to compare two trends with one shifted in time. But I think I'd like to see all history presentation features applied natively in Live rather than shifting to PHV to view data. You can create a host of Trend displays in Live and call these up as pop ups or scroll through them in a display frame. And your are always in the HMI environment.

    Andre Dicaire

  • Shamusk

    In reply to Andre Dicaire:

    Could you explain how to Add/ Remove Pens on the embedded trends? i found the Script in BOL but I'm not sure what to do with it.
  • Andre Dicaire

    In reply to Shamusk:

    I'll have to unpack my brain on this. It's been a couple of years since I worked with this. Maybe tomorrow.

    Andre Dicaire

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