Configuring UCOS Graphic Screens

The graphic screen development tools in UCOS are both familiar and unique.

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The interface is similar to familiar illustration tools such as Microsoft Visio and Adobe Illustrator.

What's different in UCOS is that you can develop sophisticated, full-color, dynamic screens without the tedium required by traditional graphic screen development tools.

Details

As with most screen development tools, primitive graphic objects, bitmaps, controls, etc. are selected from a toolbar and visually placed on the screen where they can be used to create static and dynamic symbols associated with field devices. The developer has complete control over color, size, shape, and run-time dynamics.

What is unique about UCOS is that the developer does not even have to do much of that in order to develop sophisticated, full-color, dynamic screens.

Templates Make Short Work of Device Graphics

Typically, each screen component (such as a pump) is used multiple times in a project — often hundreds or thousands of times.

With UCOS, each type of component is designed, tested, and certified just once by a senior engineer and placed into a device template library. Then a small group of screen developers deploys those certified components onto the HMI screens.

For example, the screen developers might deploy one pre-tested pump object hundreds of times over dozens of screens. They don't have to create tag names and screen dynamics for each instance of that pump, nor do they have to tie tag names and dynamics together and coordinate them with PLC memory registers, as in traditional systems.

They simply choose the correct pre-configured pump device and place it on the screen. At that point, all the configuration is complete having been accomplished in a single step by the patented, object-oriented technology underlying UCOS. Of course, each screen graphic can be modified on a device-by-device basis.

Using UCOS templates, a small handful of screen developers can turn out hundreds of screens in less time than it takes using traditional HMI utilities. Perhaps more important, this approach is much less subject to individual interpretation of the specification and results in screens that are more consistent both visually and operationally.

Full Range of Drawing Tools

Of course, UCOS includes a full complement of screen development tools that can create any needed symbol, screen, and screen dynamic including:

The above static, dynamic, and operator action properties can be combined to allow behavior not specified above. For example, a mouse click can change the value of a tag that causes the fill color of an object to change.

For a more detailed look at this subject, download the UCOS Functional Overview (PDF 1.8M).