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System Requirements

The tables below show the system requirements for the proper installation and operation of the software. Keep in mind these are the recommended prerequisites for the basic installation - depending on your project, you may need different requirements.

Downloading and Installing FrameworX

We commend downloading our evaluation version to start exploring our software. You can do that by filling out the form here.

We offer a FREE TRIAL with:

• Two hours of resettable runtime

• Multiple demo projects to use, review, and learn from

• 500 communication points

• Access to all the features in the platform

• Access to all our standard communication protocols

• MQTT Broker

• OPC Client and Server

The Engineering Environment is enabled to edit projects for 30 days with no time restrictions. After the 30-day evaluation period, your project will open but with limited access to the entire project. Project Information access is enabled.

When you install FrameworX for the first time, just click Install. It takes less than a minute!

Managing and Running Solutions

When you first open the software, you'll find a list of your current solutions. By default, you'll find all of our demos installed. Before creating your own solution, we recommend exploring our demos!

For new users, we recommend starting with the Brewery Demo. In this solution, we’ve built a brewery line from scratch, using all of the main software features. At our training site, you’ll find a free course that explains how we did this, from creating a project to adding alarming capabilities. *Update with the demo information for v10*

To open a Solution, just select from the list and click "Run" to simply deploy it or "Edit" to take a look at how we created it. You can also double click the solution to load it.

It will take a minute to open the solution. Once it's successfully started, you'll find the following Welcome Window.

Creating a New Solution

If you want to create your own solution, simply click "New" in the Solution Manager.

Creating a new Solution consists of three phases. First, you must choose which version of the Product Family you'll use and click Next. The features included in your selection will be represented by the icons on the bottom of the page.

Then, you'll move , you must choose what kind of application you'll build. UPDATE, there's a grammatical error 

Finally, add a title and a description and choose a location on your computer to install this solution (we install it inside the Documents folder, by default). You can choose a template for your solution here as well, but for this example, we won't select anything. When you're ready, simply click "Create New Solution". 

Creating a new solution may take a minute - once loading is complete, you'll see our Home Page, that contains all of the basic information for this solution.

In the homepage you can also change the Theme you'll be using: we offer five different options (Light, Dark, Indigo, Blue and Live). By default, Light will be selected.

Creating a Simple Display with Symbols

Note: the current Alpha has some bugs on previewing so I'd like to review this part after it has been corrected.  

Let's start by exploring the Draw Environment. To access, go to Displays → Draw, or simply click the Draw button at the top menu.

This will open the main Draw Environment. By default, the first page created will be the MainPage, where your main content should go.

Before adding anything to the display, you can create tags directly from this environment to use in your page. Simply click the New Tag button in the top menu. This will open a dialog box. 

For this example, create a tag with the following settings and click "OK": 

Name: Fan1Enabled
Type: Digital

After you've created your tag, you add graphical components to link it to. On the left side of the screen, you'll find all of the components you can use to build your display. Search for "RotateBlower" to get a fan from our Symbol Library. To add it to Display, simply drag it to the main drawing area. You can then double click it to open the Symbol Settings and map it the tag as shown below.

Then, search for "SelectorSwitch" to add a switch to the display as well. Double click it to connect it to the tag we created.

Click on Document Preview, and then click on the SelectorSwitch to turn on or turn off the RotateBlower2 fan.

You can also go to Runtime and click "Run StartUp" to run your solution.

Connecting to Devices: Modbus Master

To add Devices, go to Devices → Channels. Here, click the "+" sign to create a new channel. From the list, select "Modbus Master Protocol" and click "OK".

Them, go to Nodes, on the same section of the menu, and do the same thing to create a node connected to the channel. 

Then, let's go to the Unified Namespace section to create some tags related to this device. Simply click New Tag to create four tags, as defined below:

After the four tags have been create, select them and copy the selected rows: we'll use them on the Points section and in our Display, to showcase data from the device.

First, in Devices > Points, right-click to Insert Rows and copy the tags.

Then, go to our main display (by clicking on Draw) and paste the tags there as well. Text bales will be automatically created.

To view your display, choose Document Preview once again.

Note: training material mentions running a simulator, but I couldn't find that in the new version. I'll update after I figure it out. 

Create a Real-Time Alarm

To test out the Alarming functionalities in the platform, let's create an alarm. First, on the UNS section, create a new Tag, named FilterAlarm, with the Type "Text".

On Alarms → Groups, you'll find some default groups created. 

On Alarms → Items, you'll need to create some items, as shown below. To create, simply click on directly on the first line of the table.

In the Draw Environment, search for AlarmWindow and drag it into the display.

Insert three buttons under the AlarmWindow object and give their respective names: “All”, “Warning”, “Critical”. You can change the button text in the Drawing Properties, on the right side of the screen.

Double-click on the buttons and configure the filters:

Create Trends

Let's create a Trend Legacy to show the real-time values.

On Unified Namespace → Data Templates, create a new template called Trend.

After you've done that, add the following lines to the table (just start typing on the first line of the table and click Enter to add it).

Name: Reference | Type: Reference
Name: Cursos | Type: Double
Name: pen | Type: Integer

Go to Unified Namespace and create a trend tag as shown below.

Finally, let's add it to the Display. Search for TrendChart and drag it into the display. Double click it to configure it as shown below.

Suggestions for this step: 

1. Create a Database and DataGrid
2. Reports
3. ExternalTags
4. More details on Runtime
5. Scripts

Data Explorer Tools

The DataExplorer tools allow you to easily perform data mining and monitoring from various data sources, including MQTT Brokers, OPC-UA, PLCs and SQL databases. Here, let's see how you can connect to our MQTT Simulator to browse its data.

Go to Data Explorer → MQTT Tools to start. You'll need to press the green "start" button to start our Local Built-in Broker and the MQTT Publisher Simulator. 

Once you've done so, click Connect to see and browse the generated data.

If you have any PLCs in your network, you can automatically connect to browse its data structure.

10. Licensing And Registration

To get the full capabilities of our platform and start building your real solutions, you'll need a License. The information about your license and the links to activate it can be found in the Solution Manager page. There you may choose between online and offline activation. You can learn more Licensing and Activation here.

Exploring More Features

With these ten steps, you've learned the basic on working with FrameworX and you're ready to continue your journey.

In this chapter, you'll find more basic information to get you started.

Once you're ready, we recommend you:

• Explore the User Guide, that goes into detail on each module.
• Take a look at our Solution Examples, that showcase different aspects and functionalities of the platform.

You can also schedule a introductory meeting with one of our onboarding specialists here.