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

[Garyhlucas]

+1 haltall

[HB_GUY]

Yes, this would be very helpful!

Instruction request!
After hard-coding all the E-stop stuff in to kill all except two programs. I came up with the idea of a Kill-All-Programs with Exception-list and should only be able to use the instruction in $Main.

Good idea.  We already have a HALT, which halts a specific PROGRAM or TASK code-block.

So HALTALL would halt ALL PROGRAMs and TASKs, except for all the system tasks (e.g. $Main, $tTopOfScan, $t1Second, etc.), and also except for any other specified USER PROGRAM and/or TASK code-blocks (variable list).

And like you stated, HALTALL would only be available from $Main.

[LWgreys]

I already thought of having Task included in the HALTALL (Kill-All-Programs) but figure if the task is running in a program other than $Main, it to would be halted also. It wouldn't hurt to have it in also.

[Scot]

I think I've run into a bug in the Designer (1.4.3)
When you close a PID View or the PID Overview, any other PID Views open will stop recording the trend line. You have to close all of them and reopen them again to get them to restart.

[franji1]

I think I've run into a bug in the Designer (1.4.3)
When you close a PID View or the PID Overview, any other PID Views open will stop recording the trend line. You have to close all of them and reopen them again to get them to restart.

I was able to duplicate it.  We will look into it.  Sorry about that.

[Scot]

I've been watching PID views little more and found other minor issues.
If you don't have the PID view maximized (have it windowed) with the Data Form showing and then open another PID view, in the new PID window the Data Form will not be shown. Turning off and then back on the Data Form using the button fixes it.

One other issue I had was if I close a project with PID view open, the next time I try to open the project it pops up a dialog to select a PID loop and freezes there. Status updates still occur in the background but the mouse is the spinning "wait" cursor and the designer seems stuck. If you right click the designer icon on the taskbar and click "Close window", the designer will begin responding to mouse input again.

Another tiny error I just edited this to add. If you have 2 PID views open and at different time scales then select Sync on one and sync to the other, it will sync OK and the text for the time scale will change correctly but the slider will stay at the old scale. Very minor bug.

[HB_GUY]

Anyone else need more room for their tag names? I am a little verbose in my naming and I am always trying to shorten the names due to character limits.

Would that be hard to expand?
You would not have to display the entire string in the ladder view just the first 16 characters like present. You could display the full name on mouse hover though..

[plcnut]

Yes, This has been requested by many of us, and I believe Host has it in the pipeline...

[BobO]

Yes, This has been requested by many of us, and I believe Host has it in the pipeline...

...for 2.0.

[Dean]

Question: How hard would it be to add some formatting functionality to the comment editor? I've only done half a dozen PLC projects here at work, so take this with a healthy grain of salt. I'm sure that my experience is like many others here in that the work ends up getting reviewed by (and requires approval from) people who wouldn't know a ladder diagram from a step ladder. Because of this, I always try to make my comments as ELI5 as possible. I often find myself wishing there was a way to highlight a certain phrase or word in order to make it stand out. The CLICK comment editor has Bold, Italic, and Underline as well as color options, which in my limited experience has been more than sufficient. You wouldn't even necessarily need buttons on the editor window. If the editor was able to process some sort of basic markup instructions with an accompanying help file topic that would serve the purpose.

[franji1]

Question: How hard would it be to add some formatting functionality to the comment editor? Bold, Italic, and Underline as well as color options, which in my limited experience has been more than sufficient.

This is definitely on our TODO list.

[Controls Guy]

Idec has that too.  One of the few nice things about their controller/software.

BTW, why are people who can't read ladder "reviewing" your program?  What is it they think they're going to find out?  That makes about as much sense as me "reviewing" a document in Swahili by staring at it uncomprehendingly.  Why not just make a separate document intended for non-engineers that explains whatever aspects of it they're interested in?

[Dean]

Oh there is always a written design specification, as well as user requirement and functional requirement specifications for all projects. That said, a printed copy of the ladder goes into the installation qualification data pack. It gets scrutinised by reviewers in the engineering, technical services, and quality assurance departments. Heck even a senior management executive gets a crack. I argue with my boss about it. I say "What are they reviewing, they don't even know what they are looking at?" His response is always, "That's why you comment it to death". The CEO puts it best. When questioning subject matter experts, he says, " If you can't explain it so that I can understand it, then you don't understand it well enough yourself."

[Controls Guy]

I argue with my boss about it. I say "What are they reviewing, they don't even know what they are looking at?" His response is always, "That's why you comment it to death".

Still seems like an odd way to go about it to me vs. having a separate document aimed at their areas of interest.  Why would they insist on looking at the actual ladder logic document?  If you end up putting in more, and more verbose, comments than you'd want for yourself or another controls engineer, it just clutters up your view of the ladder, and the ladder definitely clutters up what they're trying to digest.  Weird that they'd insist upon doing it this way.

The CEO puts it best. When questioning subject matter experts, he says, "If you can't explain it so that I can understand it, then you don't understand it well enough yourself."

I've heard that before, and I believe there's a degree of truth in it, but not to the degree people think.  It's a handy principle that I'll have to remember next time I'm listening to Stephen Hawking talk.  If I can't follow him, I'll just assume HE'S the problem and doesn't understand his subject matter!

*Not comparing either you or myself to Stephen Hawking, just exploring the validity of the CEO's belief.

[ADC Product Engineer]

You'd be amazed at the number of programs that I have worked on over the years that don't have a single shred of commenting.  I would rather rewrite from scratch than to try to decipher someone else's logic. 

At one point in my career I was put in charge of some junior programmers.  They thought 5 lines of commenting was sufficient for a few hundred lines of code.  That was when I started doing what Dean's boss does.  "Give me the program when you think you are done with it", you'll get it back if I can't tell what the program does by reading the comments.   Program quality improved significantly after that.