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Errors migrating project from CitectSCADA 7.10r0.28 to PlantSCADA 2023 (update 06)

Tiago Angelo

Good evening, I'm a new user of the PlantSCADA/CitectSCADA and I have been tasked with migrating and merging two existing SCADA systems, both made on the same older Citect version 7.10r0.258.

One of them the migration was done sucessfully and I have started to make changes to it and so far it works fine in the simulator (I have not tested the communication with a PLC yet, will do so this week).

The other project is giving me an error that seems to be like an internal exception of the PlantSCADA since the text is very generic and in my OS language even though I have installed PlantSCADA in english.

I can attach the .ctz files if such is allowed..

The error that I get is the following:

The text in the message box translates more or less to: "Invalid chain of characters"/ "Invalid character chain"

This text box appears dozens of times while doing the project import, specifically when this action is being executed:

It reaches around 4000 tags analyzed, throws the error in the PlantSCADA main window and starts again, I can abort it, and I can run the imported SCADA in simulation mode, but I don't even know if I'm losing tags or not, since after aborting that step no more errors are generated. This is a project with 4000-4500 tags, so validating one by one with is not a feasible option.

Any idea on why this is happening, and what can I try to fix it?

Best regards and thanks for your time.

  • in reply to Mark

    I think you are confusing the old Excel SaveDbf macro with the current Excel Add-in. The macro was very unreliable indeed and produced corrupt dbf files when you changed a column width.

    The current add-in is a lot more user-friendly and works very well in my opinion, and if (according to your experience) LibreOffice does not alter special characters it could be a good (and free) alternative as well.

  • in reply to Tiago Angelo

    I believe you need to follow Patrick's steps to clear the Linked field from your tag definitions to make them editable. Another way to edit them is to click Export All. That saves to a CSV file you can easily edit. Then you click Import All to replace your tag definitions with the edited ones from the CSV. I haven't tested that with non-English characters.

  • in reply to Patrick

    Yes, you are right, I didn't realise that the Excel SaveDbf had been updated (as I said it's probably 2 decades since I last used it!).

    I find Excel to be excellent at Excel files but on anything else (dbf, csv, etc) I find LibreOffice is far more likely to do what you expect than Excel is. LO also does things like regular expression search/replace which can be really useful on large Citect spreadsheets sometimes.

    On the other hand LO isn't officially supported by Aveva. Although I was concerned in your earlier comment that the Excel option only seems to support 32-bit? 

  • in reply to Mark

    Hi Mark,

    In regards to the Addin only supporting Excel 32bit. Yes this is currently the case. However, the team have just completed 64bit support. It will be available with 2023 R2 version of Plant SCADA. We haven't made any plans/decision to release it outside of that at this time.

  • in reply to Nuno Ventura

    Hi Nuno,

    Thanks for clarifying that its a link (makes sense, it looks more like a chain link..). I will see if I can edit them using Excell when it comes time to merge the projects.

    I had already removed those warnings, but since I was doubting myself thinking that I had broke the project I did a fresh import.

    You are indeed correct regarding the PLC, the whole factory uses Schneider M340 PLCs, most are from 2011/2012 so I can't upgrade the firmware past 2.20. There are 6 PLCs in total on the install, with near 2000 digitalO points plus some 80 VFDs controlled via analog signals.

    I will look into how the whole OFS thing works and will test it on my local test bed since I didn't know about it, thank you for letting me know that it exists.

  • in reply to Patrick

    Hi Patrick, thank you for you detailed instructions. I will try them latter this month and I will report back.

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