Equipment Updating Issues

Hello,

So, each time I make a template (type) change to and update equipment, it does not delete or update the originally linked tags. Instead it creates a whole new set of tags for the modified item(s). I have to manually delete the tags and re-update. I have tried updating equipment with and without the incremental update check or not does not make a difference. With the option unchecked, my update take like 12 minutes, so this is not a long term option for me my anyways.

I know that I don't have the fastest PC, but it's not a slacker either. I have about 800 equipment define in totality that spits out about 24000 variable tags, 7000 alarm tags and about 1900 trend tags. I have several include projects that I work in, each include is tied to a specific IO device and has the it's own equipment definitions. So I'm able to just update the equipment in that individual include projects, it's just not as convenient as just working in my top level project. The update utility seems to be single threaded, any plans on improving the performance on this guy? Also, the Equipment Editor seems to be where thing get broken. I have two pieces of equipment that is named the same, but belong to separate clusters and projects, the Editor changes the parameters on both at the same time , instead, I just use the model view in Citect to copy and paste, make my changes to the IO, Cluster and Project.

The only work around I found that deletes all of the tags associated with the equipment is to delete the equipment in the model view, update the equipment, recreate the equipment instants then re-update. I usually just copy them into Excel, then delete them in Citect, copy and past them back in. Just a pain.

I'm really hoping that big improvements in this area are a major focus in the next release of Citect. We have not used equipment in the past, but since we are moving full steam ahead with SA and all new screens through our entire operation, this is something we now have to deal with.

Parents
  • I agree that both Equipment Editor and Update Equipment are in desperate need of an overhaul.
    If having 800 equipment instances leads to a generation time of 12 minutes then there is something seriously wrong with the tooling.

    I'm guessing that Citect uses standard Jet / ODBC as an interface to the dbf files which leads to these performance issues. They should drop that mechanism and rewrite the dbf file byte by byte from scratch.

    One of my customers was so frustrated with this, that he developed an equipment generator himself using this alternative mechanism. From 750 equipment definitions the tool generates 45000 variable tags, 9500 local variables, 400 advanced alarms, 11000 digital alarms and 500 trend tags in less than 10 seconds, and rebuilds the indexes as well. The only thing backdraw with this tool is that always all tags are deleted before generating new ones, so you are not able to do any manual adjustments to them.

    Citect's current equipment implementation does not even have the ability to use Local Variables, so that is another major flaw.
    Also, only having 253 characters available for equipment parameters is not sufficient.

    I hope our feedback will be heard by the developers and trigger some improvements.
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  • I agree that both Equipment Editor and Update Equipment are in desperate need of an overhaul.
    If having 800 equipment instances leads to a generation time of 12 minutes then there is something seriously wrong with the tooling.

    I'm guessing that Citect uses standard Jet / ODBC as an interface to the dbf files which leads to these performance issues. They should drop that mechanism and rewrite the dbf file byte by byte from scratch.

    One of my customers was so frustrated with this, that he developed an equipment generator himself using this alternative mechanism. From 750 equipment definitions the tool generates 45000 variable tags, 9500 local variables, 400 advanced alarms, 11000 digital alarms and 500 trend tags in less than 10 seconds, and rebuilds the indexes as well. The only thing backdraw with this tool is that always all tags are deleted before generating new ones, so you are not able to do any manual adjustments to them.

    Citect's current equipment implementation does not even have the ability to use Local Variables, so that is another major flaw.
    Also, only having 253 characters available for equipment parameters is not sufficient.

    I hope our feedback will be heard by the developers and trigger some improvements.
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