Background:  Having drawn a set of monitoring and control tools for one pump, you realize that exactly the same tools will be required for several other identical pumps in the system.

Using page parameters, you can quickly generate a series of control pages, using the original as a template.

 

In this simplified example, there are three tags of interest. The remainder of the system is not shown.

•    A Pump tag, PumpStatus_1.  This will be in state 0 when the pump is stopped and state 1 when the pump is running.   PumpStatus_1 is represented on screen using an image change drawing method.

•    A digital control, PumpStart_1.  This is drawn using a set value button that starts the pump by writing a 1 to the PLC using a 1 second pulse.

•    A second digital control, PumpStop_1.  This is drawn using a set value button that stops the pump by writing a 1 to a different address on the PLC using a 1 second pulse.

 

These three tags are initially drawn as shown in the following image:

 

28. Click on Configure to open the configuration toolbox.

29. Click on the Libraries button to open the Libraries dialog.

30. Right-click on the Pages node to open its context menu.

31. Select New.

32. Enter a name for the new page: (e.g. Pump Control Template).

33. Press enter to set the name.

34. Click on OK to exit the dialog.

35. Select NO in response to the prompt to add the new page to the menu.

36. The new page should appear in the Libraries dialog.

37. Right-click on the new page's node in Configure to open its context menu.

38. Select Properties to open the properties dialog.

39. Select the Properties tab.

40. For the Page Window Flag, select "Always Display in Window".

41. Click on the Parameters tag. 

42. Click on Append to open the new parameter dialog.

43. Set the name as "PumpStatusP".

44. Set the description to be "Pump on/off state".

45. Set the type to be Tag

46. Select a DigitalInput for the tag type.

47. Click on OK to save your work.

48. Click on Append again.

49. Set the name as "Pump Start".

50. Set the description as "Digital control to start pump"

51. Set the type to be Tag Typ.

52. Select a DigitalControl for the tag type.

53. Click on OK to save your work.

54. Click on Append again.

55. Set the name as "Pump Stop".

56. Set the description as "Digital control to stop pump"

57. Set the type to be Tag

58. Select a DigitalControl for the tag type.

59. Click on OK to save your work.

60. Click on OK to exit the page properties dialog.

 

61. On the Overview page, select all three of the tag drawing methods.

62. Right-click on any one of them to open a context menu.

63. Select Cut from the menu.

 

64. From the Libraries dialog, right-click on the Pump Control Template page to open its context menu

65. Select Edit to open the page editor window.

66. For each parameter, select the matching tag.

When the window opens, you may need to stretch it a bit to accomobdate the drawng methods.

67. Right-click in the editor window to open a context menu.

68. Select Paste from the menu.  The tag drawing methods should appear.

69. Position the three tag drawing methods near the top left corner of the window.

 

70. Close the page edit window.

71. If the Libraries dialog is still open, close it.

72. Open the menu editor.

73. Add a tree to the menu, named Pump Controls

74. With the top node of the tree selected, click on the Add button to add a new page.

75. Select the Pump Control Template from the list.

The template now shows up as a page in the menu.

76. Click once on this node to edit the name.

77. Change the name to Pump 1 Control

78. Select NO when the menu editor prompts for whether to modify the title of the page in the application.

79. With the Pump 1 Control page selected, click on the Parameters button in the editor.

80. The Edit Parameters dialog will open.

81. Select appropriate tags for each of the three parameters. (The original tags are probably appropriate here for the first instance of this page.)

Repeat the last 10 steps to add another copy of the page, this time named "Pump 2 Control" and with a second set of tags selected for the parameters.

 

If you were to run your application now, you would see two pages, both identical, but each with an appropriate name and each linked to a set of tags for a different pump.  Adding new pumps to the system is as now a simple matter of repeating the final 10 steps of the above process.