Creating Wonderware Custom Trend Objects

Home / Creating Wonderware Custom Trend Objects

Creating Wonderware Custom Trend Objects

One of the rolls an SI partner plays with the clients it supports is to enhance the value of technical solutions to provide further business value.

One such recent enhancement opportunity was on the Wonderware Historian Client Trend.  Our clients asked for more organization in the tag picker to reflect the plant structure, rather than merely listing out tag names by type analog or digital.  In addition, there was a need to easily save trends in an organized structure and not have all files in one directory (i.e. besides ‘My Documents’).  This is especially important when you’re working in an RDP environment.
 
Well, if this resonated with you, you’re not unlike some of my clients, who voiced their desire for these, and other features of Historian Client Trend, to be augmented.
 
Avanceon listened to clients’ needs and requests and we devised a custom Historian Client Trend which features:
 
* Completely customized tag picker based upon System Platform Structure (Container/Contained Members). Your tags are displayed in a more readable and intuitive manner.
* Tag picker contents are filtered by ‘Device’ based upon the Container Name. In this manner, specific equipment can be displayed, or a group of equipment, as well as an entire area, or the full plant.  Based up how you configure your hierarchical names, the possibilities are endless.
* Trends are saved as ‘profiles’ and are ‘anchored’ to the device (filter) by which the tags were presented.
* A default trend profile is defined for each device (filter) such that the trend, when launched, will open the default trend. This allows easy conversion of legacy systems where there were many trend screens.  Now there is only one trend screen and many profiles.
* Trends may also be saved and anchored specifically to the logged on user. This way, an operator can open his/her favorite trends at any node, any time.
 
The trend object is developed with Visual Studio and utilizes Wonderware’s latest Trend (v10.6 found in 2014R2). It is importable as a client control within System Platform.  Easy to use setup scripts allow the object to be configured and used in any type of InTouch application.
 
The Custom Trend has proven useful and reliable and is in use several very large System Platform installations.  Clients are happy, operators are happy and best of all, much time and effort was saved in when converting large numbers of trend screens in the migration of legacy systems.
 
Let us know if you see the same or different enhancements.  We always love to collaborate!

 

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.