C-More Micro HMI -- How To Use Libraries for touch screen display for PLC at AutomationDirect

Libraries are a great way to save objects and graphics you have created for future use in other projects. Especially things you will use over and over like company logos, or even custom objects you have created for your particular industry, etc. To use a library, you just select the library tab over here, and then pick the sub library you want. You can choose to view everything, or just the objects or just the graphics. We’re going to look at the graphics … and you can see I have already populated this with some AutomationDirect logos. To use one of the graphics out of the library, you just drag the graphic or object onto the screen. This one has a problem – it’s too big and transparency is turned on. That’s easy to fix - just double click on the object – we say we want to stretch it to fit – or in this case shrink it to fit – we’ll lock the aspect ratio – and let’s turn off transparency...and there’s our nice clean AutomationDirect logo. These libraries are easy to manage. These tow folders are located under your C-More Micro Install folder. If I bring mine over here to look at, you can see on my local disk, under program files, under AutomationDirect, there’s the C-More Micro, and under the C-More Micro there are two folders: one called user graphic and one called user object. Those folders are exactly these folders right here. If I want to add some graphics to those folders – I have some right here, these are the blue ones you are looking at, let’s add the color and gray scale AutomationDirect graphics to this folder. I simply select those and drag them into either folder – the object folder or the graphic folder. Once I have done that and I refresh my view over here … you can see, I have the original blue ones plus now I have the full color and gray scale logos. To use them, just drag them onto the screen, and clean them up – turn off transparency, stretch to fit, lock aspect ratio … and there is our nice clean logo. Note that the C-More Micro only accepts BMP files, so don’t try to use a jpg, TIF or anything else. You can only use Bitmap BMP files. To add a custom object to your library, just right click on an object you have created, and send it to the object library. Just give it a name – we’ll call it “New Object” – specify whether you want to save TAGs or not .. and hit OK. That new object is now in the object library – right here. Now whenever you need a copy of your new custom object you can just drag it onto the screen. Note that if you right click on a graphic, and say “object to library” it will put that graphic in the OBJECT library – NOT the graphic library. So be careful about that – even though it’s a graphic, it is still going to put it in the OBJECT library. If you would like to export this library so someone else can use it in their project, then you just go to the file menu, and say “Export >> Library” Choose where you want it to go, give it a name, what do you want to export. Do you want to export both the object AND the graphic libraries? Do you want to export all the screens in the project? Let’s go ahead and change the name of this so I don’t over write anything … and it’s in our library folder so I’ll say “export” – and all of that stuff has been exported. Now if someone brings up another project, all they have to do is say “file >> import >> library.” Go find that library, import it and it will ring all those graphics and screens you saved into the new project. We don’t need to do that now because we already have all of those. That’s all there is to using libraries – be sure to check out the other videos in this series. And as always, please send us any topics you would like to see covered – or - any other comments for that matter – we appreciate the feedback