Do-more How To Do-more: Data View from AutomationDirect

With Data View you can easily monitor or change any data element in your entire ladder program while the program is running. Let’s say we want to monitor and control this C2 control bit – well, just click on Data View, fill in the blanks, we want to monitor C2. It’s currently set to off. If I want to edit that or change it I click on the Edit button. To change C2 I just double click on one of these buttons. I get a warning. These warnings can be annoying, but keep in mind, when you change something in your system that may be directly affecting a piece of heavy machinery so please be careful with that. Me, I like to turn these off. So we can turn this C bit off and turn it back on. You can also create a data view by right clicking on a data element or rung and selecting “Monitor Values .. from rung contact and coils or just from the instruction itself. So if I select from Rung Contacts and Coils to Dataview it populates the Dataview with everything from this instruction and everything in this coil. If I right click and say Monitor Values and only give me the stuff in the instruction, it only gives me the data elements associated with this instruction right here. That’s a real quick and easy way to populate the Dataview. In a previous example, we doubled clicked on C2 to change it and double clicked to change it again. If I single Click on C2 nothing happens. Then I can independently write that later. I can also select several things and write them all at once. Once you get a Data view setup the way you like it you can save it: Highlight the data view window, then Debug – Data view – save or save as. Now you can open it anytime you want to explore a particular task or sub program! You can also save by right clicking on the data view window and doing a save or save-as. You can send any or all elements in a data view to the trend view simply by highlighting the parts you want, and saying Trend All, or Trend the Selection. And it instantly pops up the Trend View with those data elements in the view for you. Check out the separate video on trend view for more on that. You can export the contents of the data view to a spreadsheet. Just right click and select “Export,” all or the selection, and save it as a CSV file so the spreadsheet can bring it up and look at it. If you want to change the format of an element, just select it and then choose the number format from this drop down right here. Let’s say we want to look at that one in Hex… Each Data view is fully customizable –You can either go to View >>Options >> Dataview and change things here OR just right-click, options, Dataview. For example, right now we’re just displaying the nicknames, but if I wanted to see the element along with that, I can do that. So I can see C1 is also named “Drive Y0.” If I go back to that options screen, one of the ones I like is to change the bit display settings. Right now the ON is a box ON and a box OFF. I find that hard to see, so I like to change the ON to a green dot and the OFF to a RED dot. It makes it much easier to see what’s going on at a glance in the Dataview. You can use Data View to monitor the status of Programs and Stages. Just drop the program name in the Dataview, I have a program here called “Set_Y7,” drop it in, and it automatically populates it with some of the more commonly used flags. If I type “Set_Y7” with a dot, then I get a list of all possible flags associated with that routine that I can monitor here in the Dataview. All of these stages, the time slice, the counters, everything. Let’s monitor if this program is done yet. Now I can just monitor the one flag associate with that routine. We’ll, that’s a pretty good start on using the Data View – it’s an incredibly powerful, yet easy and intuitive way to view just about anything you could want to monitor and/or control in your program. Be sure to check out the other videos in this series for more ways to get up and running quickly with the DoMore PLC. And as always, send us any suggestions or comments you may have – we appreciate the feedback. Spend Less. Do More. From Automation Direct.