Please tell us what your experience has been with Do-more...

[nfei]

We have installed 20+ Do-Mores and they are great! We have used the 205 series since their introduction in the mid-90s and you guys hit the mark with the Do-More covering all of our long standing "wish lists" for the 205 series. As always, AD and Host are the best by leading the pack with product development, technical support and price. With Do-More and Do-More Designer I have no idea why anyone would use any other product. We have been encouraging many of our customers to begin converting their existing high priced, outdated, and poorly supported AB, GE and other PLCs over to the Do-More. Several of our customers are big GE users and when they see what the Do-more can do, how easy Do-More Designer is, how inexpensive the hardware is and the software is FREE they are taking a hard look at their future. My personal recent experience with paying $1800.00 for the GE Proficy programming software, it taking 3 weeks to get permission to download it, then spending 3 hours on the phone with over half a dozen GE technical support guys just to get it downloaded, ensures I will always be a loyal AD and Host customer!
KEEP UP THE GREAT WORK!

[Mike Nash]

OBSERVATIONS - Do-more Designer 1.3.1

Why are all the items in the Project Browser that you can't do anything with, e.g. Memory? Right click context for them is just generic with too many items anyway. A double click just takes you to the top of the tree. A double click should maybe take me to the configuration for that memory block.

Commenting in another post on the issue of not being able to find answers to previous questions, I finally ran into this one from Reply #274 on: 2014-05-15, 12:00:59. I can't find where this was ever answered and I was trying again today to see what this does. I can't even copy anything from that to use elsewhere. Am I missing something?

I am looking forward to DmD 2.0 to see what goodies we will find.

[BobO]

OBSERVATIONS - Do-more Designer 1.3.1

Why are all the items in the Project Browser that you can't do anything with, e.g. Memory? Right click context for them is just generic with too many items anyway. A double click just takes you to the top of the tree. A double click should maybe take me to the configuration for that memory block.

Commenting in another post on the issue of not being able to find answers to previous questions, I finally ran into this one from Reply #274 on: 2014-05-15, 12:00:59. I can't find where this was ever answered and I was trying again today to see what this does. I can't even copy anything from that to use elsewhere. Am I missing something?

I am looking forward to DmD 2.0 to see what goodies we will find.

I wasn't involved in the project browser development, so Franj will have to comment on this, but I think primarily it is there to provide a place to browse the system config contents. I would agree that the desired double-click action would be to open up the memory config, and that doing nothing isn't particularly helpful.

[franji1]

Why are all the items in the Project Browser that you can't do anything with, e.g. Memory? Right click context for them is just generic with too many items anyway. A double click just takes you to the top of the tree. A double click should maybe take me to the configuration for that memory block.

Double click in a tree control is typically used to navigate the tree.  However, we can add an option (like we do with the code-blocks) on double click behavior (since this was the original intent of the "Code-Block" browser, but became the "Project" browser).  They are there to provide a simple mechanism to see the data type and sizes of every memory block and heap-item through a "browse" mechanism.  Very powerful.

Anyway, possible options when double-clicking on Memory locations are:

1. Open the Memory Configuration for THAT block
2. Open a Memory View for THAT block
3. Open the Memory Image Manager for THAT block
4. Open the Memory Image Data Editor for THAT block
5. ?

We can definitely add a prompt to ask you which one you want to do on a double-click, then also let you have a configurable "default" behavior for double-click.  We can add other possible "double click" behaviors as the need arises.  You said that you are using 1.3.1, not 1.4.1, so you do not know what Memory Views or Memory Image Data Editor are.  They are quite useful.

[Mike Nash]

Why are all the items in the Project Browser that you can't do anything with, e.g. Memory? Right click context for them is just generic with too many items anyway. A double click just takes you to the top of the tree. A double click should maybe take me to the configuration for that memory block.

Anyway, possible options when double-clicking on Memory locations are:

1. Open the Memory Configuration for THAT block
2. Open a Memory View for THAT block
3. Open the Memory Image Manager for THAT block
4. Open the Memory Image Data Editor for THAT block
5. ?

We can definitely add a prompt to ask you which one you want to do on a double-click, then also let you have a configurable "default" behavior for double-click.  We can add other possible "double click" behaviors as the need arises.  You said that you are using 1.3.1, not 1.4.1, so you do not know what Memory Views or Memory Image Data Editor are.  They are quite useful.

Actually the quote was from nearly 2 years ago, so I am using 1.4.3.3 now! I am keeping up this time.

As far as what it should do in the Project Browser, I'm open. What it would be preferable for it NOT to do, is lead me off every so often trying to discover what it is SUPPOSED to do. I forget in between times, and it's not in the help.

[henke]

At some point it would be really nice to see the Comms server updated so that connections can be managed better. Of course it's way better than RSLinx right out of the box but still has some weaknesses. Being able to re-order them and maybe having a wider or full-page table format Link Selector and Editor/Configurator wizard (i have a strong distaste for dialog boxes that aren't resizable). Either that or integrated as a tearoff child window in Designer. And when a Designer crashes you need to Task Mgr in order to shut it down quite often. Additionally, it'd be wonderful to have some kind of enhanced network discovery in there as well. I'm rambling here but basically asking for a DSLaunch on steroids to support the Do-More series.

To answer the original question though the overall experience has been 4/5 not 5/5 partly for the reasons mentioned above.

[webhead]

I just installed it in a directory other than its default directory and I can not save or create a file because it is looking for the default directory location for the projects. I had to create the default directory tree it was looking for and copy the project directory over there to get it to work... Defeats the purpose of letting me chose the location.

[BobO]

I just installed it in a directory other than its default directory and I can not save or create a file because it is looking for the default directory location for the projects. I had to create the default directory tree it was looking for and copy the project directory over there to get it to work... Defeats the purpose of letting me chose the location.

Sounds like an install bug. It's an easy fix. The project directory is specified in the INI file, just edit it to what you want it to be.

[webhead]

Where is that ini file located? I cheched all of the install directories and can't seem to find it.

[mhw]

Open DMD. The file can be found in the Launchpad under the applications tab.

[franji1]

Open DMD. The file can be found in the Launchpad under the applications tab.

Yes!

The original file is in the Windows folder, however...

Due to security reasons, the OS keeps the actual modifiable copy  in an invisible folder structure under your user account.  The "DmDesigner.ini" entry in the Launchpad's Applications group is a batch file to locate that actual file and load it in Notepad automagically so you can modify it.

 The one in Windows is just a placeholder for the OS but is not used by the executable.

[willpoll]

Is it possible to make the force element dialog popup in the force value field rather than the element field?

I usually get there by right-clicking the element in a data view so I've already established the context of which element I want to force.

I've been unable to reprogram myself to select the value box every time and usually wind up overwriting the element name, having to cancel, and then slowing down and trying again.

-Will

[franji1]

Is it possible to make the force element dialog popup in the force value field rather than the element field?

I usually get there by right-clicking the element in a data view so I've already established the context of which element I want to force.

I've been unable to reprogram myself to select the value box every time and usually wind up overwriting the element name, having to cancel, and then slowing down and trying again.

-Will

Doesn't sound hard...

[leonwirth]

Generally very good. I would like to see a couple changes. The most important and simple would be to copy the Timer and Counter descriptions from the Timer or Counter to the timer .Done, .Acc... and other contacts so we do not have to write them or copy them twice.
  You could do this a couple different ways like only copy 1 time when the description is entered. Or you could always copy if no individual description was added for say the .Done contact.

  Second, Be able to manually configure the I-O cards so each slot can begin with a multiple of 10 like 10, 20, 30... This would make it much easier because then say the 7th lighted input or output would be 17, 27,37...

[BobO]

The most important and simple would be to copy the Timer and Counter descriptions from the Timer or Counter to the timer .Done, .Acc... and other contacts so we do not have to write them or copy them twice.
  You could do this a couple different ways like only copy 1 time when the description is entered. Or you could always copy if no individual description was added for say the .Done contact.

We actually do some of this for the nickname, inheriting the nickname of the entire structure for individual fields. We do not do that for ExtraInfo or Description. Don't think it would be that hard actually.

  Second, Be able to manually configure the I-O cards so each slot can begin with a multiple of 10 like 10, 20, 30... This would make it much easier because then say the 7th lighted input or output would be 17, 27,37...

Would be great, but this one is more problematic. Data needs to remain byte aligned for a number of reasons.