PAC Display - cool things you can do

Printing
Did you know, in PAC Display configurator OR runtime, you can instantly send the PAC Display window directly to the printer? No need to do a screen grab or copy/paste–just go to File > Print and, as Ben likes to say, “BOOM!” You have a printout to show the boss the latest trends, or scribble on as you make adjustments to your user interface.

One word of caution, if you haven’t upgraded to 9.1 PAC Display yet, be sure to move the Print window that pops up (where you can select a different printer) out of the way so it doesn’t cover anything in the PAC Display window–it will get printed too. This issue has been fixed in 9.1–just one more reason to upgrade today. :slight_smile:


In the toolbox: the Button button & other buttons
In case you’re still using a version of PAC Display less than 9.0, here’s my number one reason for wanting 9.0 or higher:

The new button to create a button is Ok by me! Before you would have to make a little shape like a square, put some text on it, maybe group it and perhaps worry about z-order. None of that needed now.

There’s also the combo box option right next to it, to make data entry even easier.

Those last two new buttons are Pro Only, and might make you think about upgrading to the Professional version:

  • PID button for launching a PID Viewer in Runtime for the configured PID
  • URL display area within a normal display window. Unlike a URL
    display window, this allows you to create other graphic objects within the same display window.

Lots of other stuff (besides support for redundancy) got added in 9.0. Here’s a complete list from the 9.0 Release Notes.

Of course, with 9.1 out now you’ve got even more reasons to upgrade.

-OptoMary

In PAC 9.1, there is a bug I just find, I can’t copy and paste object as in PAC 9.0.

Hi leeveney,
An update with a fix for this 9.1 PAC Display paste problem is currently in QA and will be released soon. If you can’t wait, contact PSG (our Product Support Group) about the “beta” version. The KB article is here: [URL=“http://www.opto22.com/site/knowledgebase/kb_view_article.aspx?aid=1800”]KB81363.
-OptoMary

They are also working on an issue where some projects’ windows don’t display in config after upgrading. Be careful with your PROJECT_BACKUP folders, and don’t save the projects that fail to convert in the meantime.

From what I can see the “Print” function in PAC Display takes a screen shot of the active window. Similar to Alt-Prt Scr.
I’m creating a simple graphing / recording application and would like to be able to print a trend plot without the Title Bar, Menu Bar or Window border. Is there some way I can accomplish this?
I see how I can hide these things, but I still either need access to the Menu bar to get to the Print function or create a Button with a dynamic attribute to print the screen, but then the button would get printed…

Maybe this is also a feature request to have a check box in the Window > Properties dialog to toggle printing of the Title Bar, Menu Bar and Window border?

Thanks :slight_smile:
-Reese

Reese,

I will take your request to the developer.

But, in the mean time, a few quick thoughts…
First up, make a window with just what you want printed, nothing more, then have three invisible buttons, say, top right, bottom right and top left.
When you click the top right button, it invokes the menu command to hide the menu bar.
Then, you click the top right invisible button, and it does the print. Thus, you get the trend with nothing else.
Lastly, before you leave the window, you click the bottom right button and it restores the menu.
You could add a 4th invisible button at the bottom left which takes you back to your other windows / navigation window. This would save you having to navigate to another window via the menu bar.

To make the invisible button, just paste down a shape and make the lines invisible and the fill invisible.
To invoke the commands to make the menu go away, just use the ‘Operator driven attributes’ -> ‘Execute menu item’ and in there you will find the ‘show/hide menu bar’.

It will take longer to read this post than to do it…

Anyone else got any thoughts on how Reese might do what he needs (while using PAC Display! 'Cause it would be taking the fun out of the challenge by using an external program like AutoHotKey to fire up a screen capture program like HyperSnap)???

Maybe I’m missing something here about what the final use of the screen capture that Reese wants, but surely just using the cut tool of Paint to save only the required bit of the screen copy is a lot easier than all this? if he is looking for some sort of presentation of trend data, surely saving the data to historical data files and importing the file into Excel would give wonderful graphical results for presentation.

Thanks Ben, the invisible buttons worked well.

Your right gmitchell, using Paint or Excell would have accomplished it as well. But ease of use with as little user interaction as possible was the most important aspect of the project. It is used in a shop environment to document pressure testing of oilfield components. The employees that I designed this for are hired more for their lifting ability than computer skills :slight_smile:

we need some Redundancy example (PacDisplay Professional) need to explore both controllers at the HMI, which one is running or fault. rramirez@auting-control.com

Hi raul,

Yep, your right, we do need it, and in fact, we do have it…
This feature was added after redundancy was added to the controllers and thus slipped through the cracks getting fully documented.
Sorry about that. (I am going to take steps to get it added asap).

So, till such times as the Main document is updated (Doc #1831), here are the details:

Memory Map Address 0xF8001000

Returns the redundant controller status.
StateValue (Decimal)
Powerup = 1
Maintenance = 2
Online: Non-Candidate = 3
Backup: Non-Qualified = 4
Online: Candidate = 5
Update Complete = 6
Backup: Qualified Connected = 7
Cold Start = 8
Failover Start = 9
Active = 10
Backup: Qualified Disconnected = 11

So, read this mem-map address in each controller, and you will have the full status of each controller in the redundancy system.

You can then display this in PAC Display.

Subscribe to updates through your my.opto account and you will get an email as soon as the updated document is made live.

Thanks for your patience.