Appendix

Object Model and Namespaces

With most systems, you must create a Tag or Variable for all internal properties, and you must create custom logic for your projects. FactoryStudio allows your application to directly access all the business objects that were created in your project. This means that user-created temporary tags are not required to manage the status of PLC network nodes, the total number of alarms in a group, or the number of rows in a dataset. You can now access runtime objects, business objects (representing a network node), an alarm group or dataset, and then display the required information or take action directly through the object's built-in properties.

FactoryStudio has an underlying .NET object model with a 100% managed code, specifically targeting the development of Real-Time data management applications. The hierarchical object model includes the following top-level objects, which correspond to the main modules in FactoryStudio:

The top-level hierarchy is implemented as .NET Namespaces. Each Namespace has the .NET classes and objects that are created when building a project. These objects have runtime properties, methods, statuses, and configuration settings. 

For instance, the Tag namespace contains all the tags that are in the application and each of the tags have built-in field properties, such as Quality, TimeStamp, Min, Max, Units, etc.

Examples

Tag.tagname1.bit0, tag.tagname2.timestamp
The same concept of the tag fields applies to all namespaces, for instance:
Alarm.TotalCount:, Alarm.Group.Warning.Disable:

FactoryStudio has Intellisense auto-completion for when you build a project, fill in input fields, or create scripts. This guides you to the any existing properties that are allowed for the object you are editing and allows you to easily "drill down" to a specific property. 

When accessing a project object in the .NET Script Editor, it is necessary to prefix the namespace with an "@" symbol in order to avoid conflict with the names of the .NET local variables.

Examples

In Script-Tasks and CodeBehind, use:
@Tag.Analog1
@Device.Node.Node1.Status

The @ symbol is not necessary on Grids and Dialogs. Some input fields may require objects of only one type, such as Tag or Display. For these, Intellisense will automatically guide you to the required objects. 

These concepts may seem abstract for users that do not have experience in .NET or similar object-oriented systems. However, the power of these concepts will become clear when users learn the engineering configuration tools and the FactoryStudio modules. When users get used to working with object models and Intellisense, the users realize that there is a huge increase in productivity so they no longer want to work with systems that lack these features.

On this section we will explain more about the Namespaces available on Factory Studio.