Home / FactoryTalk Optix / Getting Started
Description
This video demonstrates the process of creating a simple FactoryTalk Optix application.
The application controls a tank with fill and discharge valves, displaying water level and flow rate readings.
The Factory I/O scene is linked to a Logix controller, and logic is run using FactoryTalk Logix Echo emulator.
Configuration involves setting up communication with the Logix controller via Rockwell Ethernet IP driver and importing controller tags.
Steps include creating a main window, navigation structure, and placing control objects on pages within the application, with dynamic linking to controller tags for real-time control and feedback.
Transcript
(00:01) in this video I wanted to take a moment to show how easy it is to get started with Factor talk Optics and to create a really simple screen and put a few control objects on there to uh to control so to do that we’re going to use the factory I O software which is a digital twin software tool that’s what we show right here on the screen I have a tank that I’ll be able to kind of control there’s a fill valve and a discharge valve so I’ll be able to control the percentage that these valves are open and as the water fills in the tank I’ll
(00:40) get a reading on the level meter and as water is leaving the tank through the discharge valve actually we’ll get a a flow of the flow meter reading as well then to to make that work I have my factory IO scene tied to an actual Logics controller so I have Studio 5000 running here I’ve got some some real simple logic and I also have some controller tags that I had to create to tie back to the factorio scene and then actually running this logic is our Factory talk objects Echo emulator for the 5580 control logic CPUs
(01:23) or the L8 CPUs so here’s my logic set go dashboard I have a couple of chassis created but the stem Fest chassis and then and then spot zero is a CPU called stem CPU which is the one I’m actually going to be downloaded to this virtual CPU has an IP address which is 127.00.1 so everything is already downloaded to the Logix Echo emulator so the so the controller is running and the logic is being created so everything’s good to go on the controller and on this factorio emulation software next piece will be to create our fabric
(02:06) talk Optics application so when I first opened up Factory talk Optics I was given a choice between a default project or a project for an Optics panel I chose the default project so went into the default project and this is what we get right here so you get a dashboard you get the project view here on the left you get some properties on the right so anytime I click on something here uh in the left on the project view any properties related would open up in the properties window so there’s a few basic steps we need to
(02:43) do when we’re first getting started here one we’re going to connect the communication or configure the communications to the device that we want to get the data from in this case we’re going to we’re going to tie this to all Logics uh controller so that’s a Rockwell ethernet IP driver and uh basically we’re gonna we’re gonna connect it to that and give it the IP address second thing we’ll do is we need to kind of create our our main window and our navigation and our pages and then the third thing is we’ll put the objects you
(03:15) know on those pages so let’s do the configuration driver first there’s really two ways to do this we can come here under the project view find com drivers right click and say new and then here’s our list of available drivers that we can choose from ra ethernet IP driver would be the one that we want to go with or we could use the wizard so we’ll go with the wizard no devices available click a new station so we have a choice here between com driver or OPC UA client we’re going to stick with com driver and then there’s
(03:51) our list of drivers and we’re going to choose our ra for Rockwell Automation ethernet IP station hit next the route is simply the IP address and that was 127.0.0.1 I’m using that that’s the loopback it address that the emulator is using right now and the last thing I could do here is give it a name so it picks a default name I’m just going to call it Logix Echo there’s the name of the CPU I could have also called it stem first since that’s what I call my CPU originally um basically this this gives me the the ability to to give it a unique name
(04:33) because I can have more than one device tied to this ethernet IP Rockwell driver so I’m going to hit next now it gives me the option here to pull in the tags so I have two ways to do that I can do it offline by browsing for the ACD file location it’ll open up the AC file and pull all the tags out of that project or being that I am connected to a an actual real controller even though it’s emulated I could do it online so when I do it online it went it’s it’s reading all the tags live out of the controller and I can choose controller tags
(05:13) and that’ll choose them all and hit next and that will have imported everything successfully to show that we can see our com drivers now has the ra ethernet IP driver underneath and now I have Logix Echo now I have tags and controller tags and then there are all the tags that were in my controller properly imported so next thing would be go to the under a UI for user interface go to the main window and we’ll double click on that and here’s our main window kind of canvas and again the properties for main window show up over here so the width is
(05:57) 800 the height is 600 that again was just the default that I chose for this project but I can change any of these by just hitting the pencil uh Dot symbol there and I can type in a new value and hit enter we’re going to go ahead and leave it default now one thing you do with this main window is we can kind of create this treat this as a bit of a kind of like the the base you know screen and we’re going to do is we’re going to create panels and those panels will kind of act as containers that would open up in this
(06:33) space so what we can do is we can actually create a header up here and uh one way to do that is look at this drag an icon image from my desktop right into this space so I’m going to go ahead and put the Rockwell logo just you can put any logo up here of course or any type of Header information now when I put this in you can see it’s quite large and again now that it’s highlighted or selected the properties for this this object or this image show up here on the right so if I scroll down a little bit we see that our width is set to Auto and our
(07:12) height is set to auto well I can basically go ahead and click on that and edit that I could also of course take a corner here and drag it and resize it notice when I did that it it put pixel sizes here in the width and height now so I’m going to go ahead and just set this to 200 by 50. to make it smaller and I’ll put it up here in the upper corner again to kind of act as if it was a header so that’s our main window we’ll kind of leave that as is so if I want to create separate pages or panels that would open up as kind of
(07:51) like a container inside of the space what we’re going to do is we’re going to we’ll do that by coming up here to UI right clicking say new and we’re going to say new folder and I’m going to go ahead and just call this pages to make it more descriptive as to what this folder is all about and then underneath Pages I’ll right click I’ll say new I’ll choose containers and I’ll say panel this now creates a panel called panel one and I’m going to go ahead and rename this as well to pages or uh actually I’ll take off the S and
(08:39) just call it page foreign for this page are going to be over here so notice that it came up with a width of 300 and a height of 300 but this is a 800 by 600 space plus I have 50 pixels kind of Taken for this upper um kind of a header area so so to speak so I’m going to go ahead and uh and give the width um I’ll call I’ll do 780 and we’ll say the height will actually be um let’s say it’s uh 500 and we could give it a margin left and top margin um just to kind of put that in there so that’s that’s kind of our base model for our page which again would be
(09:42) acting as containers so what we’ll do now is we can we can right click here and say new page pages and then page and now here we go to page one created that’s already got our base uh kind of our template for for the pages right so we have our model and this will be our individual page so I’m going to rename this I’ll call it tank nice thing to do here is we’re going to create the navigation um because we’re going to be able to put a navigation structure uh here to pick if we have multiple pages so to create that
(10:23) navigation we’ll come back up here to main window we’re going to say new container navigation panel now it drops it in here but we’re going to go ahead and fix this sizing so what we’ll do is we’re going to first we’re going to say we’re going to stretch it horizontally and we will stretch it vertically and then we’re going to give it a top margin of 55 and that’ll bring it down below our our header and then to tie our pages to this navigation window we would just simply take our our page we created here called tank and
(11:14) drag it right there so if I had multiple pages if I went ahead and created a new page I could just drag it and put it there so let’s come back to tank and now we’re going to finally put some objects on here and tie them to our Arc scene so I’m going to do is v-net we have a tank and two two control valves I’m going to first I’m going to put the tank object in here so to do that up top we have our template Library so if I choose template Library I can now just type in tank it’ll search for the tank uh kind of graphics and I’ve got a few
(12:05) to pick from I’m going to just choose this one right here I’m gonna click it and drag it into the uh onto this page now I can kind of resize this if I wanted to and there are some tools here to help you know Center it and all as well if I want um but this tank again the properties here we can see that we have some abilities to control the level the Min level and the max level now back on the factory IO scene it is actually scaled from zero to ten so I’m going to put my max level at 10.
(12:52) and the minute level will stay at zero now I can change the fill color it’s blue which will kind of match what the scene has so I’m going to leave it at Blue the other thing is the level so right now it’s it’s set to zero but we do have this kind of dynamic link so I’m going to choose a dynamic link and I’m going to tie this to an actual variable that’s in the controller and being that it’s a tank level I’m going to tie it to the level meter so I’m going to come down here to com drivers ra ether IP Logix Echo tags controller
(13:33) tags and it just so happens that the float in one is actually the level meter so I’ve just tied the tag and my controller to the animation of this tank just like that so I’m going to add two more things here real quick just to show and that’s going to be I’m going to put a slider so that I can control how you know what percentage of the of the fill valve is open and I’ll put a second slider that will control the percentage that the discharge valve is open so to do that we’re going to come here to to tank and we’re going to say new base controls
(14:26) and under base controls I have things like label text box spin box button switch but I’m going to use a linear gauge and that puts a linear gauge here on the page now right off we can see this gauge is is scaled from 0 to 100 that control valve in the scene just like the tank level is also zero to ten so the minimum value is zero the maximum value is a hundred I’m going to change this to 10.
(14:58) foreign I can also take this and I can kind of drag it and resize it a little bit so the other thing I need to do is I’m going to tie the value of the slider to a tag in the in the controller so just like I did before we hit this Dynamic link I will come down until I find con drivers logic’s Echo tags controller tags and I’m going to tie it to the fill so there’s a tag in the controller that will write the value out to the to the control valve one other thing I do here is I can right click and I’ll just say new bass
(15:47) controls and a label and that way I could label this and skill valve put them wherever you want so now I’m going to choose I’m going to select this and I’m going to click both of these I’m going to right click I’m going to say copy and then I’ll say paste and then I will call this discharge valve and then if I click on this I’ll have the properties I already have my 0 to 10 scale properly but I’m going to change the dynamic link to the discharge and say select so one thing I want to do is I’m just going to show I want to get an actual
(16:41) reading for what is the level in the tank so to do that I’m going to go ahead and put one more label here I’m going to add one more bass control and a label and I’ll put this label right above the tank then to tie this label to an actual tag in the controller we’re going to come down here to text where it says label three and we’re going to add a dynamic link and in this case we’re going to go back down to our controllers com drivers objects that go tags controller tags and we’re going to choose that float in one again and
(17:30) because that is the level of the tank so I’m gonna go ahead and save this I’m now going to just show how this works with the emulator so I’m in emulator mode which will basically open up an emulator window in Optics so I’m going to go ahead and get my factorio scene kind of back up here again and then the emulator is over here and I just drag it over so what this will do is as I can control this slider to control how how what percentage this fill valve is open as well as this slider will control this discharge valve so I’m going to go ahead
(18:19) and open this up to about five you can see that the water started filling right away you can see we have our our tank level uh indication is showing so right now we’re at 1 out of 10. I can back this off and you can see that my fill rate will slow down or I can shut it off all together now it is off as you can see there’s a little bit of a bounce going on there but the 2.
(18:55) 4 so we can control how many percent we can control the number of precision here that we’d want as well open the discharge valve we’ll see the tank level will start to fall 2.1 2.0 if I were to start filling again we’ll have a little bit of a we’ll have some discharge going as well as we’re filling so that’s pretty straightforward pretty simple way to uh to just create some basic animations and if I can talk Optics the one thing I could also show here if I stop this I can come back here if I were to copy this and paste it I could also show the flow rate
(19:47) so again it’s selected so here are the properties so right now it’s tied to float in one I could also just change this to float in zero that is basically the flow rate that is uh coming out of that tank so I’m going to start the emulator back up again get my Factor audio scene going here so here’s the emulator so if I were to um show some some liquid flowing out you can see that the flow rate is three point 2.
(20:36) 8 just want to show there I actually are different numbers they’re both about equal there a minute ago but we can see that as I change the discharge valve uh percent that flow rate value changes if I were to open the discharge valve full out see our flow rate went up significantly notice that when I did that you can see the animation the uh the discharge valve um plungers so to speak is uh is changing there so uh so pretty cool uh anyway so that was uh pretty easy pretty straightforward way to uh to control our
(21:15) scene and into um to create a simple fact or talk Optics application
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