Configuring projects within the Ignite Server
Adroit Ignite HMI Software Designer Interface
The Adroit Ignite HMI Software Designer is the interface you will use to interact with and configure projects within the Ignite Server.
The Adroit Ignite HMI Software Designer application is the entry point into building any Adroit Ignite HMI solution.
A secure log-on and rights are applied to allow users to manage what capability and user or group of users have on the system.
In addition, the Adroit Ignite HMI Software Designer is the engineering environment in which users create access to data, manage users and groups and build graphic forms to be displayed in the Operator.
The Adroit Ignite HMI Software Designer application is the entry point into building any Adroit Ignite HMI software. A secure log-on and rights are applied to allow users to manage what capability and user or group of users have on the system. In addition, the Adroit Ignite HMI Software Designer is the engineering environment in which users create access to data, manage users and groups and build graphic forms to be displayed in the Operator.
The graphical plant display windows within the Operator are themselves composed of objects, in this case, display objects known as picture elements. In addition to state information, such as size, location, colour, etc., display objects may also be configured to have a wide variety of animation behaviours.
By connecting presentation layer animation behaviours to plant values represented by Agents within an Agent Server. Many different animated display effects can be configured that, in real-time, depict your plant in exactly the way that you require. These will be described in detail later, but the graphic shows a “Percentage Fill” behaviour being used to display the filling of a picture element based on the value of a Tag.
Create re-usable standardised, designed object templates in the Adroit Ignite HMI Software Designer to represent items such as pumps, valves, conveyors, and blowers.
Duplicate these standard objects as instances when creating projects using the Object Model. Each instance inherits all the standardised object template configuration including scanning, logging, alarming and any context built into the original object template, so the entire Tag database, logging, scanning and alarming can be generated whilst configuring the graphics.
Add context to each object template and view in the Adroit Ignite HMI Software Designer or operator. Group equipment by Equipment Type, Manufacturer, Energy Rating, Voltage and any other detail important for being able to monitor and manage. The context view is a means of creating keywords to classify your existing objects so that they can be searched for or grouped together.
A complete catalogue of the standard Windows controls is available within the Adroit Ignite HMI Software Designer. If you need additional functionality it is possible to develop your own or purchase control and simply bring it into your Adroit Ignite HMI system for you to use. You can drive any exposed property from any Data Element within the Server or Script.
Enterprise Manager
The Enterprise Manager view in the design application allows a user to organise all of the related projects from a single location. These include a variety of applications.
Adroit Ignite HMI Software can be fully or selectively backed up and restored easily using the Adroit Config Editor application.
There is also an auto-backup function to backup changes to graphic forms and the Agent Server database and Config files, this allows for manual roll-back.
Alarming and Events
Quickly attend to any situation by monitoring alarm tag data and issuing alarm notices.
Alarm controls can be used to display data in real-time and historical alarm information on the graphics. An operator can filter alarm information during operation to view only necessary data.
By altering the conditions to match the user’s needs (e.g. sort and combine alarm charts) alarms can be analysed efficiently.
Alarm agents are used to define the course of action to take when an alarm occurs. For example, sending an SMS or email and logging the information to a database for history.
Trending
It is possible to view real-time and historical trend data in single trend control.
On the other hand, historical data is stored in the Adroit Ignite HMI historical trend files or to an external OLE DB and logged as a trend history.
The logged data will be shown as a historical trend alongside the real-time data
The trend control supports Bar, Column, Line and Pie Charts.
Behaviours
Behaviours are used to display and manipulate data elements. Adroit Ignite supports the following behaviours:
• Bind Value - Drive a data element (value) to and/or from the value of a property of a control or vector.
• Color - Assign colors to the states of a digital value; or based on specific value ranges; or define states of color based on a bit mask.
• Database - To execute a database query from a graphical form, without writing a script
• Display Value - Display and if necessary, format a value.
• Execute Command - Perform commands, i.e. launching an application; opening, closing or printing a graphic form; logging a user on/off or switching users.
• Flip Bitmap - Create a defined sequence of images or a multi-image display, this behaviour can only be added to a Picture vector object.
• Location - Dynamically move the object linearly in a defined X-Y direction by means of a monitored value.
• Operator Action - Typically provides methods that allow end users to change a value at runtime.
• Percentage Fill - Dynamically fill an object by means of a monitored value.
• Rotation - Dynamically rotate the object by means of a monitored value.
• Size - Dynamically resize the object linearly by means of a monitored value.
• Tooltip - Display additional information when the mouse cursor hovers over the object.
• Visibility - Display or hide an object depending on a Boolean value.
Enhancing Visibility - 2D and 3D Graphics
Create high definition 2D graphics using Adroit Ignite HMI Client. Equipment monitoring can be effectively represented using only 2D graphics. Control enlargement, reduction, rotation, and parallel movement to monitor anything.
There are 3D graphic forms available for 3D perception, these can be built in any third-party development environment and simply imported into the Adroit Ignite HMI graphic system as static backgrounds and even XML files. Live data can then by placed over the graphic to create a truly amazing UI.
When an alarm occurs, click on it and the information displayed will assist with fault finding. The information can also be viewed as a trend. Any graphic form can be launched from an alarm entry. Importing of CAD drawing files is supported in the Adroit Ignite HMI using the XAML import functionality.
Built-in Symbols or Design your own
A set of pre-made symbols are available in the equipment library, which can reduce engineering time spent on creating graphics. Custom symbols can be created and saved to the equipment library. The equipment library has more than 300 symbols which cover a variety of industries including water treatment, building management, food, chemicals and more. The same design environment is used to build your own libraries including statics, wizards and templates that can be used time and again to save you engineering time and money.
Animation of graphics is made possible by applying easy to use “behaviours” onto the properties of a graphic. These include but aren’t limited to; display value, execute command, colour, etc. The purpose of animating a graphic form, causes it to display data and information and allow the end-users to interact with it. This reduces the labour for creating scripts to perform the complex animation.
Graphical Libraries
Adroit Ignite HMI offers standard Windows controls familiar to programs within the .Net environment including buttons, radio buttons, labels, panels etc. or you can use our Vector-based graphics to build your solution.
Adroit Ignite HMI provides a comprehensive library of static and dynamic objects that allows for rapid development of a solution. The library is separated into four main areas:
Process, Building, Electrical and Situational Awareness
Based on the ISA 101.10 the Situational Awareness library contains objects that will allow the operator to have a more intuitive experience.
The Windows datagrid and datagridview controls to use in an Adroit Ignite HMI solution to support complex queries, sorting and filtering on the data. The queries can be triggered from Adroit Ignite HMI data elements so dynamic queries can be executed to deliver the most up to date information to the Operators.
The OLE DB datasource allows views from tables, views and queries to be executed and delivered into the required views.
Wizards
Wizards allow you to reuse the same graphical object and its assigned behaviours (if any), over and over again with different values (data elements) without having to recreate this object from scratch every time. In other words, a wizard is a reusable design-time object, much like a Windows control.
Wizards also have the facility to update their instances that have been added to graphic forms to their current configuration, when they are modified after having been used.
A Wizard is a pre-drawn and/or preconfigured skeleton of graphical objects and their assigned behaviours (if any), which has placeholders (substitutions) for data elements which can simplify and speed up the task of creating graphic forms. But, instead of directly specifying the values that drive these behaviours, these are replaced with value-placeholders (or substitutions).
Wizards
Templates
Templates are reusable graphic forms that can be used at run-time. A template should be used if you would normally require a large number of identically configured documents to represent similar items.
The fundamental difference between a graphic form and a template is that a template has aliases and is therefore designed to be displayed within a Template Graphic Object control that displays a graphic form and connects data elements to any aliases of this graphic form control.
Scripting
Adroit Ignite HMI has been specifically designed with the aim of providing simple non-scripting methods to perform advanced functionality through the use of behaviours. However, scripting is provided for the more advanced user and can easily be used in tandem with these other non-scripting methods. This is in accordance with the general philosophy of openness with which Adroit Ignite HMI has been written.
Since Adroit Ignite HMI has been created using the .NET framework, scripts can be written in Microsoft Visual Basic.NET or Microsoft C# (CSharp). The user has a choice of our simple built-in editor or can use Microsoft Visual Studio as the development environment.
Objects and Context | Easy Access to Equipment
Allows for easier sorting, filtering and management of Adroit Ignite HMI projects.
Add context to each object template and view in the designer or operator. Group equipment by Equipment Type, Manufacturer, Energy Rating, Voltage and any other detail important for being able to monitor and manage.
The context view is a means of creating keywords to classify your existing objects, so that they can be searched for or grouped together.
