Recipe Proportions Tag

An optional tag that can modify the value of one or more Recipe Ingredient tags.

If you are building your first recipe, start by reading Recipes and Batch Processing before creating recipe-related tags and widgets.

Different ingredients can have different Recipe Proportions tags, but you cannot combine proportions. In other words, you cannot apply a multiplier to an ingredient in addition to applying a portion of total.

Examples are provided following the description of this tag.

Related information:

Best Practices for Tags

The ID tab of every tag includes the same common elements: Name, Area, Description, and Help ID.

Name:

Uniquely identifies each tag in the application. If the tag is a child of another, the parent names will be displayed in a separate area before the name field.

You may right-click on the tag's name to add or remove a conditional start expression.

Area

The area field is used to group similar tags together. By defining an area, you make it possible to:

  • Filter for particular tag groups when searching in the tag browser
  • Link dial-out alarm rosters to Alarm tags having a particular area
  • Limit the number of tags loaded upon startup.
  • Filter the alarm display to show only certain areas.
  • Filter tag selection by area when building reports

When working with Parent-Child tag structures, the area property of all child tags will automatically match the configured area of a parent. Naturally, you can change any tag's area as required. In the case of a child tag, the field background will turn yellow to indicate that you have applied an override. (Orange in the case of user-defined types. Refer to Configuration Field Colors)

To use the area field effectively, you might consider setting the same Area for each I/O driver and its related I/O tags to group all the tags representing the equipment processes installed at each I/O device. You might also consider naming the Area property for the physical location of the tag (i.e. a station or name of a landmark near the location of the I/O device). For serial port or Roster tags, you might configure the Area property according to the purpose of each tag, such as System or Communications.

You may define as many areas as you wish and you may leave the area blank for some tags (note that for Modem tags that are to be used with the Alarm Notification System, it is actually required that the area field be left blank).

To define a new area, type the name in the field. It will immediately be added. To use an existing area, use the drop-down list feature. Re-typing an existing area name is not recommended since a typo or misspelling will result in a second area being created.

There is no tool to remove an area name from VTScada since such a tool is unnecessary. An area definition will exist as long as any tag uses it and will stop existing when no tag uses it (following the next re-start).

Description

Tag names tend to be brief. The description field provides a way to give each tag a human-friendly note describing its purpose. While not mandatory, the description is highly recommended.

Tag descriptions are displayed in the tag browser, in the list of tags to be selected for a report and also on-screen when the operator holds the pointer over the tag’s widget. For installations that use the Alarm Notification System, the description will be spoken when identifying the tag that caused the alarm.

The description field will store up to 65,500 characters, but this will exceed the practical limits of what can be displayed on-screen.

This note is relevant only to those with a multilingual user interface:
When editing any textual parameter (description, area, engineering units...) always work in the phrase editor. Any changes made directly to the textual parameter will result in a new phrase being created rather than the existing phrase being changed.
In a unilingual application this makes no difference, but in a multilingual application it is regarded as poor practice.

Help Search Key

Used only by those who have created their own CHM-format context sensitive help files to accompany their application. Refer to Custom Help Files

Recipe Proportions tag, Settings tab

Proportions can be defined in either of two ways:

Ingredients are multiplied at batch run time

If you need to double or triple a batch from one run to the next, create a single Recipe Proportions tag and use that in each Recipe Ingredient tag.

If ingredient amounts should not scale equally, create as many Recipe Proportions tags as required to define the multiplier for each ingredient. Refer to the caution text later in this topic if the multipliers require decimal values or ingredients will have decimal values after scaling.

Used in this way, you will be prompted for the multiplier amount when running the batch.

Ingredients must add up to [n]

Sets a total amount for two or more ingredients. Within the Recipe page, one or more ingredients can be "locked", meaning "user-set". The other ingredients that use the same Recipe Proportions tag will change to equally make up the required total. To set a series of varying proportions, you might set and lock the amount for the first ingredient, then the second, etc. The final unlocked ingredient will adjust automatically to complete the total.

Used in this way, you will not be prompted for the total amount when running the batch.

Ingredient amounts and Recipe Proportions must be compatible with your PLC and the driver. For example, with standard Modbus, all values are integers unless your PLC can read and write /Float values. If using a standard Modbus device and not using /Float addresses, you cannot multiply an ingredient amount by a decimal value or write an ingredient value that contains a decimal portion.

In all cases, the capabilities of your PLC are the final word on what is possible.

The following widgets are available to display information about your tags:

Numeric Entry Widget

Example: Proportions Multiplier

A Recipe Proportions tag named Batch Size is created and configured as shown:

   (Click to expand)

All ingredients that are materials added to the recipe are configured to use this Recipe Proportions tag:

On running the batch, you are prompted for a value to use in the multiplier:

The result is a batch that is doubled in size.

Example: Portion of a Total

For one loaf of bread, the amount of flour must be 300g. But that might be made up of a combination of different types of flour. All other ingredients remain the same for the recipe.

A Recipe Proportions tag named Flour Ratio is created and configured as shown:

Each ingredient that specifies an amount of a flour is configured to use this Recipe Proportions tag:

To create a recipe for whole wheat bread, set the amount for white flour to 200g and lock. The other flours are adjusted automatically to make up the difference:

Set the amount of rye flour to 0 and lock. The amount of whole wheat flour is adjusted automatically to make up the 300g requirement:

Save the recipe as "Whole Wheat Bread - 1 Loaf".