Recipe Trigger Tag

Triggers a Recipe Book to write the specified recipe to the PLC and to record it using the specified batch number and note. This tag must be a descendent of a Recipe Book tag. The trigger may be any of the following conditions:

  • A specified recipe is complete.
  • A specified recipe is complete and an external trigger occurs, such as a timed delay or another Recipe Trigger completes
  • An external trigger occurs.

You can use this tag to run multiple recipes in sequence. For example, after Recipe A is started, a trigger tag can say “If Recipe A is complete, then start Recipe B after a 5 second delay”. The delay must be provided as an expression.

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

Expressions are a powerful tool for configuring tag parameters. But, their use requires some knowledge of basic programming. Refer to the Expressions chapter of the Scripting notes before attempting to use.

A Recipe Trigger tag can be used even if the PLC does not support Start or Done addresses.

No widgets are associated with this tag. It cannot be drawn on a page.

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 Trigger tag properties, Activation tab

If [Recipe] [Version] is complete

An optional trigger that signals activation upon completion of a selected version of a selected recipe within the parent Recipe Tag.

Leave both as --- Any --- if the trigger depends only on an external event.

And

  • If a recipe (and optionally a version) is specified, this is an additional condition that must be met before the trigger will occur.
    Timer expressions are common, but the condition could be a watch on another tag.
  • If a recipe (and optionally a version) is not specified, the "And" condition is the trigger.
  • If set to the default, 1, then there is no additional condition. The trigger will occur when the specified recipe is complete.

As an example, this might check the value of a selected tag, where any non-zero numeric value would be taken as "TRUE".

If your goal is to add a delay to the trigger, then use an expression, such as Timeout(1, 5) Note that the expression is not executed until the specified recipe is complete. This means that the Enable parameter of the Timeout function can be left as 1 if the And condition follows recipe completion.

 

Then Start [Recipe] [Version]

The recipe selection is required. Add the version if there is more than one to choose from.

This is the recipe to run when the trigger is activated.

Batch Number

Optional. A specified lot number to be assigned to a given batch run.

If set as a constant, the same number will be used each time. You can use Memory Tags to provide a way for operators to set a batch number. Advanced users could use an expression or write a script module if there is an automated way to define a batch number.

If an expression is used, it will not run until it is time to start the batch.

Note

Holds a single, predefined note that will be added to each run.

Recipe Trigger tag properties, Proportions tab

Proportions Tag

A list of every Recipe Proportions Tag in the recipe book. If empty, your recipe book is not using proportions.

Value

Set the value that should be used for each proportion in the batch run triggered by this tag.