J
JC
Among modern HMI software from major automation companies, I'd have to rank WinCC SCADA 7.x the worst. Which is strange, because I don't mind working with other flavors of WinCC, especially within the latest version of TIA Portal. I don't mind the quirks of WonderWare, or FactoryTalk.
Here is a list of my pet peeves:
- data export is VERY slow
- data export is often poorly formatted. ie, alarm message export is a non-conforming CSV that needs to be manually edited in Notepad before importing it back in. Excel can read it, but Excel fixes the formatting error when it saves.
- completely useless cross-reference utility. Worse than not having a cross reference function at all.
- Unless you're scripting, it's limited to just one action per event
- bizarre rules like disabling the script editor if your development station doesn't have the same PC name as the destination station
- unreliable... Clients frequently drop and reestablish connections to the server, even with direct CAT5 connection. Siemens can't solve it
- features that simply don't work, like local variables in a client/server setup. you check the box to make it local, no change in behavior
- alarming interface is complex to the point of absurdity
- alarm export/import can't be done for analog alarms, only digital. You can export/import the MESSAGES, but you can't set up thresholds except one at a time through the interface, and each one is a lot of mouse clicks... no way to speed up development of this with excel like you can with digital alarms
- poor integration with Siemens hardware... Aside from not being symbolic (which TIA pretends to be, this doesn't even pretend), it has no way to import tag lists from the controller, and when you set up words and dwords for alarm bits, it reverses the byte order (no way to correct this, you just have to know and account for it manually). just makes you want to pull your hair out when you have 8000 alarms and can't dedicate booleans to it because tag count would go through the roof.
- graphical editor is clumsy, need too many clicks to reach common features.
- worst trending control of any HMI I've ever worked with. I will say that it's also the most flexible trending system I've ever worked with... but that's not a good thing when you have operators who want to see data, not get a PhD in Siemens trending.
- bizarre set up for audible alarms. Another situation where they make it ultra-flexible, but ultra-clumsy so it's hard to even understand, much less configure
Here is a list of my pet peeves:
- data export is VERY slow
- data export is often poorly formatted. ie, alarm message export is a non-conforming CSV that needs to be manually edited in Notepad before importing it back in. Excel can read it, but Excel fixes the formatting error when it saves.
- completely useless cross-reference utility. Worse than not having a cross reference function at all.
- Unless you're scripting, it's limited to just one action per event
- bizarre rules like disabling the script editor if your development station doesn't have the same PC name as the destination station
- unreliable... Clients frequently drop and reestablish connections to the server, even with direct CAT5 connection. Siemens can't solve it
- features that simply don't work, like local variables in a client/server setup. you check the box to make it local, no change in behavior
- alarming interface is complex to the point of absurdity
- alarm export/import can't be done for analog alarms, only digital. You can export/import the MESSAGES, but you can't set up thresholds except one at a time through the interface, and each one is a lot of mouse clicks... no way to speed up development of this with excel like you can with digital alarms
- poor integration with Siemens hardware... Aside from not being symbolic (which TIA pretends to be, this doesn't even pretend), it has no way to import tag lists from the controller, and when you set up words and dwords for alarm bits, it reverses the byte order (no way to correct this, you just have to know and account for it manually). just makes you want to pull your hair out when you have 8000 alarms and can't dedicate booleans to it because tag count would go through the roof.
- graphical editor is clumsy, need too many clicks to reach common features.
- worst trending control of any HMI I've ever worked with. I will say that it's also the most flexible trending system I've ever worked with... but that's not a good thing when you have operators who want to see data, not get a PhD in Siemens trending.
- bizarre set up for audible alarms. Another situation where they make it ultra-flexible, but ultra-clumsy so it's hard to even understand, much less configure