# Best Way to Develop While Disconnected from Device **URL:** \ **Category:** Ignition\ **Created:** [December 23, 2020, 4:21pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/best-way-to-develop-while-disconnected-from-device/41759 "2020-12-23T16:21:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 5
**Author:** ![nminchin](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/nminchin/32/6911_2.png) [@nminchin](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/nminchin)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2020, 8:15pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/best-way-to-develop-while-disconnected-from-device/41759/5 "2020-12-23T20:15:56Z")
I find it easiest just to convert the tags from OPC to memory tags. No information in the tag config is lost in doing so (all of your OPC property config remains in v8, this was not the same back in v7!! ). ~~I use the python3 script in here to do this. Note it's python3 and therefore incompatible to run inside igntion.~~ It will convert back and forth between opc and memory, and will only convert back tags that are actually opc tags, as opposed to converting _all_ memory tags to opc, which would be bad.. > [@Reading PLC tags offline](http://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/reading-plc-tags-offline/40596/3): > > If I don’t have a PLC but I have the project, most of our tags are within UDTs which are already developed, so these are fairly easy to create manually or using a tool that takes in a list of instance names and parameters and creates the udt instances for me. Without a PLC, in v8, you can convert tags between opc and memory without any information being removed (this wasn’t in the case in v7). I use this script, just copied into the script console, to convert tag json copied into the clipboard… --- _[View the full topic](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/best-way-to-develop-while-disconnected-from-device/41759)._