Project Configuration Environment

This is the main user interface used for project configuration. After selecting a project using the Welcome interface, the Manager application allows customization of the project. The navigation to all features is a very simple 3 layer navigation.

The Project Configuration Environments are:

EDIT: Configuration for the real-time database (Tags), Historian, Security, Alarms, Devices (remote equipment and multiple protocols), Datasets (databases and files access), Scripts (.NET languages C# and VB.NET) and Displays (User Interfaces) and Reports.

DRAW: Built-in state-of-the-art drawing tool using WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) and XAML technology. It also allows an easy and powerful definition for dynamic behavior, advanced objects and code behind logic.

RUN: Allows you to run project verification (BUILD command), to TEST the application using temporary files and a safe communication mode or to STARTUP the project. It also has additional features like Publish the project, Localization, Cross-Reference and Unused objects.

INFO: Shows information about the project, such as the Project build number and published status, the product version and model and licensing information. This interface also allows tracking of project modifications and sharing notes across the development team.

More on the QuickStartGuide

Edit - Configuration Tables

To configure the basic elements of your project, from the Main Menu, click on the “Edit” icon.

The philosophy of the configuration user interface is to act like a web-page front-end where you do the easy navigation and fill in the forms, while the data is automatically being saved and commissioned to the backend without the need to do open/save/close operations all the time. For sure, you can always undo the table modification when necessary or discard the modifications on the displays if you don’t want to include them on the project.

Using the Datagrid tables

The new concepts for navigation and web-like style make FactoryStudio much easier to use than other oldstyle desktop tools. In addition, there are many features to help manage and edit the contents of the configuration tables.

Sort: Click on column name to sort by that column and to change the order to ascending, descending or none. When none is selected the internal row ID is used.

Filter: Click on the filter icon to select visible rows according to their contents.

Grouping: Just Drag and Drop the column titles to the upper area to create a dynamic hierarchical grouping of the information.

Hide or Show columns: Some columns that are not typically used are hidden by default. Right click on the title in order to select the columns that you want to make visible:

Draw - Design Displays

To configure dynamic graphic displays, from the Main Menu, click on the “Draw” icon. The Drawing tools are explained in detail in the Drawing Tools Page.

Info - Information about the Project

To configure dynamic graphic displays, from the Main Menu, click on the “Info” icon.

Project: The table Version shows information about the project version and well as the product version. The link “check for updates” checks the Tatsoft website for product updates, which are always free to install and project compatible. When an update is found it may be downloaded and installed, but this always requires user confirmation. As a policy, since the tool is used in mission-critical applications, Tatsoft decided not do any background product updates without this explicit confirmation. On the Settings table, you can modify the general configuration for your project.

Run - Test and Execute the Project

The Run environment provides access to all project execution parameters.

Select the TEST option on the left side, and then click the RUN TEST button. That will start the runtime mode of the project, which means the project configuration will be executed.

If you are running the DEMO project, use this opportunity to do a tour of the demo display which contains valuable information about product features.

Note

Executing a Build is useful for a complete verification of the application logic when preparing an application for final production, but this is not necessary during development. All modifications you make on the project are automatically and transparently being compiled in the background while you are editing.

Test: run the project in test mode, which means it runs with some protections that allow the test mode to run even on the same machine where the project is also running in startup mode. Also, functions like historian and alarm logging automatically go to temporary files instead of the defined database for the project production.

UseCount: Shows how many times each object is used inside the application, along with a CrossReference showing where each object is used and a list of Unused objects. You can double click on a selected reference in order to jump to its location.

Project Manager