Jump or continue to a point out of one chart, to a point into another chart

Hello,

I’ve been looking everywhere for a command or block that operates like a continue block but can do the same between charts. Does anyone know how?

Thanks,

Andy

Hi Andy,

Your question makes me wonder what the overall flow of your strategy is like, and if it might be time to consider using subroutines (if you’re not already) or braking up big charts into smaller charts, for the sake of making the overall program flow easier to follow, and easier for you to maintain in the future–so that you, or a fellow coworker, can easily understand how the program works.

Also, don’t forget to use lots of comments for the same reason. Comments directly on your chart are especially helpful when you’re doing complicated things with how the program flows. Also add comments to your OptoScript blocks, and all your other blocks so you remember the what/why you did something when you wrote the code initially. Your future self will thank you for dropping those clues!

You might also want to look at the different Chart commands. “Start Chart” is often used by the Powerup Chart to start your other charts, but you might also want to look at the help for the: “Continue Calling Chart”, “Continue Chart”, and “Suspend Chart” commands, in case those would be helpful for your current situation.

What exactly is it you’re trying to do? Have you considered subroutines?

-Mary

Hi Mary,

Thank you for the reply.

My program is divided into 4 charts. The reason is to separate functions and make each chart fit on the laptop display. Then I’m able to trouble-shoot without the screen scrolling in auto-step. The program is small. I’m running a large kiln and have the thermocouple conditioning, health checking, averaging etc in a chart.

I was wanting to shutdown the kiln if all thermocouples are bad. To do this I thought I could jump to the shutdown block in the main program from the thermocouple chart. I guess it makes sense that one can’t jump to another chart as they execute in parallel. I can just set a variable in the thermocouple chart and check for it in the main program trip block.

I haven’t used subroutines yet. Maybe instead of using continue blocks to go to the shutdown block I could call the shutdown subroutine. It might be worth investigating, if for no other reason but to learn how they work.

I’m definitely not a programmer and have been learning the Opto22 stuff in the school of hard knocks with help from your engineers and attending your training. Maybe I should start a thread for novice questions that can help people like me.

Thanks Again,

Andy

Andy,

Please do start that thread.
I personally have been doing ‘Opto’ for so long (~21 years) that I have forgotten a lot of the little things that tripped me up when I first started out.
The forums (and my sorry excuse of a tech blog) was a way that I wanted to address and help the full range of users that we have.
Not just me, but getting everyone putting in their 2 cents worth on each of our questions and comments.

So, yeah, please go ahead and ask, it will jog our memories and we can do our best to throw some advice and ‘what worked for me’ hints and tips your (and everyone else’s) way.

Ben.

Hi Andy,
A shutdown subroutine sounds like a good idea! I’d say when you have some activity like that you find yourself wanting to do in more than one place in the strategy, it might be time to break that part out into a sub, or if you rather, just a separate chart. Remember than while there is a limit to the number of charts that run at the same time, there’s not really a limit to the number of charts that exist in your strategy, so you can break things down into very small chunks if you’d like.
Keep those good questions & comments coming!
-Mary