Build a PanelView Plus application from nothing: FactoryTalk View Studio, a live connection to a CompactLogix or GuardLogix, displays and animation, global objects that stop forty screens becoming forty maintenance jobs, alarms, trends and security, then build the runtime, download it, and hand the machine over.
About this course
Nine modules, an hour of material and an hour of hands-on work each, which is eighteen hours, three six-hour days.
The course opens by insisting on one thing: the screen is not the machine. An HMI shows what the controller already knows and sends back what the operator asks for. It holds no logic and it enforces no interlock. Every later decision (where a permissive lives, what a button actually does, why limits go in the ladder as well as on the object) follows from that.
From there it is the real workflow. Studio and the Explorer tree, and archiving a project properly, because copying the folder is not a backup. FactoryTalk Linx and the shortcut, which is the name every tag reference in the application depends on, set for design time and runtime separately. The mismatch between those two is the classic reason an application that browsed perfectly all week shows nothing but error triangles on the terminal.
Then tags, and the one architectural decision in the project: direct reference against an HMI tag database, when each is right, and a naming discipline that survives five hundred tags. Then displays, objects and a navigation structure that still works at forty screens, and animation, the chain from tag through expression to object property that the whole subject rests on.
The last three modules are what separates a working application from a maintainable one: global objects, placeholders and parameter files so one valve graphic serves twenty valves; alarms built from a controller fault word, trends with a datalog actually behind them, and security that locks the terminal without locking an operator out of the alarm list; and finally the runtime build, the download, commissioning on the hardware, and the handover pack.
What you work through
Machine Edition against Site Edition, what a PanelView Plus is and what it is not, how a screen relates to the controller underneath it, and the software and licensing you need on the bench before module 2.
The Studio workspace, creating a Machine Edition application, what lives in each branch of the Explorer tree, and saving, archiving and restoring a project so a day of work is never one file away from gone.
Adding a driver, browsing the network to a CompactLogix or GuardLogix, what a shortcut is and why every tag you write depends on it, and proving the path is live before a single object is drawn.
The HMI tag database, direct-referenced controller tags, which to reach for and why, data types and scaling, and a naming discipline that keeps a five-hundred-tag application readable a year later.
Display types and their settings, the object palette, laying out a screen an operator can use at three in the morning, and a navigation structure that still works when the application reaches forty displays.
Visibility, colour, fill, position, width and rotation animation, writing expressions, and push buttons and numeric entry that write back to the controller, with the controller, not the screen, enforcing the limits.
Building an object once and using it on every display, parameter files and placeholders so one valve graphic serves twenty valves, and why a library is the difference between forty screens and forty copies of one screen.
Configuring alarms and the alarm banner, analog and digital triggers on a trend, user accounts and security codes on displays and objects, and locking a terminal down so an operator cannot reach the desktop.
Creating the runtime file, transferring it to a PanelView Plus, testing on the terminal rather than on the PC, and the backup, the source project and the documentation the next person is going to need.
Lab times are approximate: they are a guide to how long the hands-on part usually takes, not a limit. You can ask for more lab time whenever you need it.
FactoryTalk View Studio Machine Edition is a commercial Rockwell Automation product, and so is the runtime licence on the terminal. Neither is a free download and neither is supplied here. You obtain the software yourself, under Rockwell’s terms; this course supplies no software, no licence, no activation and nobody else’s project files.
If a licence is the obstacle, IATPV01 on this site teaches the PanelView 800 in Connected Components Workbench, which is free. Smaller terminal, fewer features, and the same thinking throughout.
There is no PanelView Plus in the lab for this course yet. The decks are readable now and the design work can be done against a controller, but the hands-on hour that needs a terminal (the download in module 9, and testing on the hardware) cannot be booked until one arrives.
Allen-Bradley, FactoryTalk, FactoryTalk View, PanelView and Studio 5000 are trademarks of Rockwell Automation, used here only to say what the course covers. This course is independent: it is not affiliated with or endorsed by Rockwell Automation, and it is not one of their training products.