ControlLogix & WonderWare

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Thread Starter

J Thiessen

Has anyone else done a project in which you used AB ControlLogix PLC and WonderWare on ethernet. What was your results and would you do it again? Thanks, JT
 
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C. Rothermich

We've been using this same setup for a couple of years at an engine plant. It's pretty reliable. We do a lot of reads and writes to a SQL database through a Wonderware application and then take information from the database and write that into the PLC. The problems we do have usually occurs when someone is performing queries or generating reports out of the database while the Wonderware application is also trying to access it. All in all, I'd say yes we'd do it again. Just be careful of any database interfaces.
 
R
Not exactly. But, we have been running a ControlLogix and Citect combination in our plant for over a year now with great success. We use RSLinxOEM as the OPC server and Citect's OPC client driver. I imagine this would work the same with WonderWare. Performance is excellent. We will be moving all of our PLC5 and SLC processors to ControlLogix. I would caution that the a caveat to consider in advance is redundancy. Citect has historically given us full redundancy at all levels of its architecture including communication with the PLCs. We take full advantage Citect's highly scaleable and highly distributed network architecture at our plant. Unfortunately, OPC does not lend itself to redundancy. Its been a long wait, but the latest release of Citect finally provides redundancy for OPC devices. If you need redundancy and WonderWare says they do it I'd be sure to ask "how?", because if its not done well it can be a nightmare, on the other hand if its done right, as with Citect, its a dream. Good Luck! Mike Ryan Aerojet Fine Chemicals
 
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Rod Doolittle

JT, I have just completed a project that used over a dozen of the control logix processors using RSView32. I have used Wonderware to Communicate with PLC's via 3rd party OPC servers which supported Control Logix with some difficulty not at the fault of the server. The problem is this, if you use a 3rd party OPC server to communicate with the Control logix then you will have to use OPCLink from Wonderware. I do not recommend this. It brought my P3 Xenon server to its knees. I had only a couple of thousand tags defined but over 17 topics. OPCLink has problems with more than a couple of topics it seems. If you use a Wonderware I/O Server to communicate directly with the Control Logix CPU then you shouldn't have any problems. Their is a ControlLogix I/O server available from Wonderware at this time on their support site. I have installed and looked at the I/O server. It provides support via Ethernet and also allows connection to Control Net. I have yet to have problems with an I/O server written by Wonderware. Side Note: The Control Logix processor is very stable, just make sure that if you change software revisions, you make sure that you upgrade your firmware at your processors. Rod
 
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Hullsiek, William

We use a combination of Infolink, iFIX, and SQL-Server. Similar in concept to Wonderware. When using SQL-Server, you need to be careful of your SELECT statements against the database. There are also database Locking issues you need to be aware of, or the entire factory will come to a halt. best practice, is to separate out production database from an ad-hoc query database. Keep production database small and fast, and allow the ad-hoc query database to grow as needed to support production and operational reporting. - Bill Hullsiek MES software engineer.
 
D
Yes I totally agree that with a combination like Wonderware and AB Contrologix PLC across ethernet is the best and robust choice. The project that i have implemented this combination on was a clean water site. With ethernet I had the facility of implementing redundacy to certain extent and has proved very very effective. For connection with each PLC I used a Thicknet backbone with tapets at convenient points. I say go for it and you won't and can't go wrong. If you need any further help or advice email me. Dal Badial Senior Design Consultant Risk Analysis Limted [email protected]
 
Rod,

You seem to know your stuff, I have a quick question for you. I have an AB ControlLogix and Wonderware GUI. I have created all my tags in the RSLogix5000 software and have pretty much created my GUI in Wonderware. However I cannot figure out how to associate my Wonderware applications with the tags I have created in the AB software. I've gone through manuals and had a rep come over to assist me, and he couldn't even figure it out. Any help you could give me?

Chris
 
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Trevor Ousey

Hi Chris,
Not sure if you were aware but this was a petty old posting, 2001. Which IO server are you planning to use? The best way is to use an Ethernet connection and I would suggest the Wonderware ABDASCIP IO server, and use the CLX tagname as the address. The other one that I used quite a lot was OPCLink with RSLinx Professional, just have to prefix the address as described in the manual. Also I found it better with only having the HMI tags in controller scope with the ControlLogix, it gets a bit long with Program scope tags.

It has been a little while since I last did anything with Wonderware, but they didn't have a good method of OPC browsing.

Cheers,
Trevor.
 
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