It would be nice to have the format of the CSV export a record or row per group to make the task of creating new groups easier. I know it will not be an easy task, a little complicated because you may have to group the export based on the database connection and table or stored procedure that the group will trigger so that the number of columns or items be the same. It is something that just came to mind when I had to build over 1000 groups and I have all the items and groups names in an excel list.
Yeah, so far we’ve found it a bit tricky to fit the group configuration into a decent CSV layout, but your idea about grouping them by schema might work…
In the meantime, when I need to generate big projects that are highly repetitive, I often turn to Python and create a script that writes the file for me. Of course, how much work this is depends on the complexity of the project and how savvy you are with python, but ultimately it’s often much easier than trying to fight with excel (of course, it could just be that I’m not so great with excel…).
I haven’t mess with python, I could have written it in VBA in Excel but I didn’t. What IDE do you use for python.
[quote=“Colby.Clegg”]Hi,
Yeah, so far we’ve found it a bit tricky to fit the group configuration into a decent CSV layout, but your idea about grouping them by schema might work…
In the meantime, when I need to generate big projects that are highly repetitive, I often turn to Python and create a script that writes the file for me. Of course, how much work this is depends on the complexity of the project and how savvy you are with python, but ultimately it’s often much easier than trying to fight with excel (of course, it could just be that I’m not so great with excel…).
Well, it depends on how much I have to do/how complicated things are. Honestly, if it's just quick, a lot of times I just open up the FactoryPMI designer, write the code in the actionPerformed function of a button, and use the "print" command to write to the console. Then I can copy/paste from the console into a text file. Again, this is just for really quick small things (generating test files for the kepware simulator, or many very similar groups).
For actual python development, I like the PyDev plugin for Eclipse.
But maybe some others around here could suggest their preference?
I use Eclipse for Jython, and SPE for Python. SPE is probably easier to set up and get working for the first time Python user, but if I had known what I was doing two years ago, I probably would have used Eclipse for everything.
Btw, put me in the camp that would use scripting for this. I would even script it if I only had ten groups, let alone a thousand. I also use Python for generating my Kepware tag import files, and it’s nice to be able to rip through a PLC source file and generate a 20,000 tag csv file without even opening excel.
[quote=“Step7”]I use Eclipse for Jython, and SPE for Python. SPE is probably easier to set up and get working for the first time Python user, but if I had known what I was doing two years ago, I probably would have used Eclipse for everything.
Btw, put me in the camp that would use scripting for this. I would even script it if I only had ten groups, let alone a thousand. I also use Python for generating my Kepware tag import files, and it’s nice to be able to rip through a PLC source file and generate a 20,000 tag csv file without even opening excel.[/quote]