Area / PLC / tags names management

General Discussion
1

Hi all,

I’ve used Ignition for a couple of years with easy and standard configurations (like a couple of PLCs on the same machine).

I’m now working on a big project with different plants over the world, various sub-departments and a lot of PLCs to link together (let’s say about 30-40 for now).

I think that at this point I need to create/name tags in a smart way following a standard scheme, to have an easy-reading software.
I should probably use folders and also give to alarms the right attributes in order to have an easy filtering interface.
I should also name tables with a specific name.

What do you suggest from your experience?

I know that this could be a big/infinite discussion, but I would be interested understanding your point of view before starting, trying to avoid at least obvious errors.

Thank you :slight_smile:

2

In terms of Ignition Tag folder structure, i believe its best to structure this in such a way that reflects your physical plant setup, so that you can easily filter on alarms, assign certain user to areas and such.
Are you going to have one Ignition project for all the plants over the world, or will they be on separate projects on the same gateway?
Will you have multiple linked gateways?

I’ve employed a structure like this for tags:


Plant 1
	Line 1
		Machine 1
			Devices
			Sequences
		Machine 2
			Devices
			Sequences
	Line 2
		Machine 3
			Devices
			Sequeneces
Plant 2
etc...

As for actual tag names, its good to use some sort of numbering scheme. Do you have a limit on tag name length?
I’ve tried to assign a number (one or two digits depending on number of machine centers/ lines) for each section of the plant so that its obvious from just looking at the tag where that device is physically.

For example:
Plant 1 = 01
Plant 2 = 02
Line 1 = 1
Line 2 = 2
Machine 1 = 01
Machine 2 = 02
Machine 3 = 03

And each different ‘device’ set for a machine area starts from 0 again. Where a device could be a motor or a valve.
So 2 pumps and 4 valves in Plant1, Line1, Machine 2, it would look something like:
PP_01_1_02_001
PP_01_1_02_002
AV_01_1_02_001
AV_01_1_02_002
AV_01_1_02_003
AV_01_1_02_004

You should probably name your PLC devices in the Ignition Gateway with a similar convention that tells you where that PLC may be.

Certainly a lot to consider for a large project like that, sounds like it’ll be an interesting one!

1 Like
3

Also try to organize the final folders with a reasonably consistent structure. UDTs can help here, but anything that presents common items with repeated names makes shared templates and parameterized windows much easier to deploy.

1 Like
4

thank you very much for your reply.

I’ve started naming tags/folders in this way and I think it’s very handy.
I’ll probably have multiple linked gateways in the future, but at the moment I’m working on the first site.