Pac Display beginner questions

I’m a real newbie building my first project. My system is running in PAC Control Basic and I’m currently working on a basic HMI.

I have a couple of simple questions. The first with text formatting in the HMI. In PAC Display Basic how do I format text for multi-lines? Also, multi-line text on buttons?

Second, when using PAC Display runtime, how do you hide the "PAC Display Runtime Basic "header bar?

Thanks,
Deane

Hi Deane,

Welcome to the forums!

  1. Multi-line text? Shift+Enter is your friend. This causes a hard line break.
  2. Multi-line text on buttons? Don’t use the text for the button. Put the button down, then overlay text on the button. (See point 1.)
  3. Hiding the title bar. In Config mode, click on Configuration -> Runtime. Wealth of options there, hiding all sorts of things, setting up how it looks when it starts up and how hard it is to exit.

Lets know if you have any other questions, there are a bunch of PAC Display whizzes on this board.

Cheers.

Ben,

Thanks for your reply. These are just the hints I was looking for!
Deane

I also have a PAC Display for beginners question. What is the recommended RAM size for it?

Thanks!
~Aaron

Ben,

Thanks for pointing me to the Runtime config options, great information.

Still having trouble with multiline text. The Shift+Enter solution just closes the text editing window and does not change the text formatting. While editing text, I press and hold the Shift key then press Enter. This closes the window. What am I doing wrong?

Deane

Aaron,

Short answer: It depends.

Long answer: It [I]mostly [/I]depends on how many super trends you have.
Check out page 5 of the PAC Display Users Guide. If you are in PAC Display Configurator, click on Help -> Manuals -> PAC Display Users Guide. (If not in config mode already, you will find the manuals under the Windows - > All Programs -> Opto 22 -> Manuals).

Some other factors to consider;
Page 35, multi monitors.
Page 97, the ‘Always in memory’ option for each window in PAC Display.
Page 195, how much data of the log file you want to keep in RAM before writing it out to the disk.
Page 206, how much data you want for each super trend to buffer in RAM before its written to the disk.
Page 240, single or multiple instances of PAC Display Runtime running on the one computer.
Page 289 How many alarms you want to buffer in RAM before writing them to disk.
Page 319, how many events you want to buffer before writing to disk.

Start with your OS of choice minimum amount of ram, then go up from there.
Since RAM is so cheap, and these days most versions of Windows knows how to use it, there is no danger in having more than enough.

Bottom line. For a pretty small project, with a few of everything, then your basic computer will be fine.
If you have more than say, 50 windows, half of which are super trends… spend the 50 bucks and get some more RAM.

Hi Deane,

Sorry, total brain wipe. (My excuse is I’m spending more time in groov than PAC Display of late).
PAC Display will not allow multi line text to be added or edited.
It was one of my big bugbears from working at the hospital…

My work around is to turn on the snap to grid. Set the size grid that is going to work for your project or window and just add the text one line at a time.
I don’t know of a more elegant solution.

Deane,
Not sure what you mean by editing, but if you need to do multi-line in Pac Display, it will not act as a dynamic block during the adding of text, but the work around is:

  1. Create each line and edit the length by moving text to next line, etc.
  2. Use the justify commands in the menu bar after creating the whole block of text.
  3. Select the all the text and right click and use align/space evenly vertical.
  4. If the spacing is not what you want, move upper or lower line up of down and realign.
  5. Either “group” (right click menu) the block and center over the “rectangle” button you have created using bring to front.
  6. OR, place it in same manner and use “lock” in right click menu to prevent misalignment.