any way to do this conversion?
I’m trying to build a recipe (.rcp)file using a PAC Control Chart that converts a float table and other variables to a string table and then use comm handles to write each index to a line in a recipe file. The recipe tool in PAC Display doesn’t meet my needs so I have to build my own. Any suggestions. Thx
Hi Don,
I’m sorry the recipe tool isn’t meeting your needs. I’m sure there are many ways to move your data, and you can certainly create pretty much any file imaginable using a file comm handle and string conversion commands. However, can you take a step back and give us a bigger picture of what you’re trying to do? I suspect you’ll get a wider range of creative suggestions if you could let us know the overall goal.
Thanks,
-OptoMary
My overall goal is to build a series of recipes that can be activated sequentially like steps. Once certain set points have been reached and after a defined length of time the next recipe “step” with new set points is downloaded and executed without interruption. Another way to look at it is a recipe collection of recipe steps. The total amount of steps is up to 30. Each step will have about 20 set points.
The first milestone for me is to create a HMI that allows a user to enter all the set points for each step. Each screen will contain 5 steps for a total of 6 screens and the final screen will contain "cool down " steps which can be jumped to from any previous step, skipping 1 or more intermediate steps.
I am trying to avoid having to create 600 set point variables by making a float table for each step. Then I would create a chart where I would convert the float table to a string table and then build the recipe text file, line by line, using a series of string transmit commands.
Since I can’t seem to transmit a float table to a comm handle it appears I must convert it first to string but I don’t see a command to do that either.
Is the only way to do this?
OR is my above description possible in any way
Some more challenges
I need to be able to change the recipe step set points real time, while the recipe chart is running.
Hi Don,
Since recipes are text files, and we don’t have a “convert float table to string table” (you’d have to loop through the table), using recipes would require a lot of overhead (as you described) and might be slow, especially given the number of floats you’re talking about.
Is speed an issue? Have you thought about using something besides recipes? I’m not sure having a float table for each step would be so bad. Or possibly a binary file or set of them (one for each step, perhaps). Then you could send/transmit a float table (to a file), it would just be not as easy for a human to read since it’s data vs. text.
Also something to keep in mind: when you convert from a float to a string and back, you could have some rounding errors.
-OptoMary
Hi Don,
Since recipes are text files, and we don’t have a “convert float table to string table” (you’d have to loop through the table), using recipes would require a lot of overhead (as you described) and might be slow, especially given the number of floats you’re talking about.
Is speed an issue? Have you thought about using something besides recipes? I’m not sure having a float table for each step would be so bad. Or possibly a binary file or set of them (one for each step, perhaps). Then you could send/transmit a float table (to a file), it would just be not as easy for a human to read since it’s data rather than text.
Also something to keep in mind: when you convert from a float to a string and back, you could have some rounding errors.
-OptoMary