PacControl, PacDisplay, PAC SIM?

PAC Project
1

Few Questions…

Version 8.5 (Upgrading is not an option for this Customer)

[B][U]PacControl Pro:[/U][/B]

[B]Q1.[/B] How do you [B]center a Chart on displayed screen area[/B] (besides frantically clicking on zoom out button or moving the Horiz/vertical scroll bars? It seems charts can get hidden (out of sight) at times or depending on who played around with PacControl last time. Is there a hotkey combo that can be used to do this?

[B]Q2.[/B] Is going in to [B]debug mode[/B] the only way to put a Controller in to [B]RUN[/B] and [B]STOP[/B] modes?

[B]Q3.[/B] Ival vs. Xval Clarification.

If I command an output to [B]Turn ON[/B], it’s Ival becomes “ON” but it’s Xval can be at “OFF STATE” (disconnected I/O Rack). So if I have logic like…

If [B]MyOutput == 1[/B] then .........

In the above expression, is it comparing the Ival or Xval to see if it is equal 1?

[B][U]PacDisplay Runtime Pro:

Q4.[/U][/B] Is it possible to create a Time stamped Historical Alarm/event Log on a screen? similar to the Event log but not a pop-up screen but on a Disply screen? (I only need to hold last 10 or 20 events)

[B]Q5. [/B]I am guessing Groove is not an option for this customer due to the Version of Firmware that they are running. Does PacDisplay Pro 8.5 have Built in Web Server Functionality

[B]Q6.[/B] After You use the menu option [View] “Hide MenuBar”, how do you get it back without closing the PacDisplay runtime first and opening it again? (If all the windows are closed when menu bar is hidden, I could not find a way to get a window to open without shutting down the run time)

[U][B]PacSim:[/B][/U]

[B]Q7[/B]. What does the [B]Save to Flash[/B] option do when pressed? Write to a File? Write to Registry? Nothing?

[B]Q8[/B]. What does the [B]Auto Run[/B] option do? Nothing? With this option enabled and save to flash pressed, I shut down the running sim and restarted. But previously saved Logic did not start and run as was evident by the Pacdisplay Runtime that was working prior to the Sim shutdown/restart.

These two options are not covered in the Readme file nor the associated PDF.

It seems that there is a drastic Loop time difference (in a good way) between Pacsim 8.5 vs. Pacsim 9.3. Same Chart that takes ~ [B]40 miiliseconds[/B] of loop time in Version 8.5 only takes [B]0.4 milliseconds[/B] in Pacsim version 9.3.

Thanks.

2

Quick first pass for ya.

Q1. Right click on the chart work area and select ‘Center on Block 0’ option.

Q2. No. I use PAC Terminal for this sort of thing. Just double click on the controller and you have a lot of control of the strategy from there.

Q5. No, PAC Display does not have any web server stuff built in (that’s why we made groov). Since you are running SoftPAC you could use that (since its firmware is newer) and connect groov to that. Import any tags from the other controllers you need.

Q6. My advise would be always have a page navigation control on every window. This way you can hide the bar and still navigate between all the windows. (This is what I did at the hospital, and every other pac display project I have worked on).

Q7. It saves the strategy to its install directory so that when you reboot the PC the strategy can be loaded up. See Q8.

Q8. If you save to flash and have autorun set then, if you enable the option in PAC Sim, you can have the strategy start running when the computer reboots. Note, you need to be using the latest version for this to work. See KB82632 for more detail.
PAC Sim (and thus SoftPAC) is our fastest controller by far. There have been many tweaks to the core code to make it run efficiently on PC hardware. Added sweetness in the fact that it can run 64 charts.

3

[B]Q1[/B]: Just hit “F” key. it zooms in/out and centers the chart in the screen. (by “frantic zooming” I am assuming you have lost the chart somewhere off-screen?)

4

Thanks Ben,

Appreciate the Help.

ON Q5.

I am using PacSim and not SoftPac for just testing in house. Customer actually has an R1 Controller with Versiopn 8.xx firmware. Can I upgrade the controller Firmware to the Latest 9.xx version and use Groove as well as keep PacDisplay still at Version 8.5?

Side Question…

If I Upgrade the R1 Controller to 9.xxx Firmware in order to use Groove, do I need to upgrade all of the EB1 Brains as well or can I keep the Brains at 8.xxx. All the data I need to access are globally scoped in the R1 controller and I do not need to get Data from individual brains as far as Groove is concerned.

Thanks again for the Help.

Best Regards.

5

nickvnlr,

You are correct.

Thanks for the Tip.

Best Regards

6

[B]Q3.[/B] Your chart/code always works with the Ival. (The Xval is the hardware state).

[B]Q4.[/B] You can make a button that launches the event viewer.

7

Thanks Ben,

Unfortunately customer wants the Alarm history on a Display screen so Event viewer is not an option unless it can be embedded on to a display screen.