Agreed. Each automation vendor’s SCADA and DCS/PLCs excude it’s own design philosophy and personality. It’s interesting to see how the thought process of different cultures and countries work! Siemens for example has its own way of HMI design and control block design (over design in my opinion) TOSHIBAs has some very simple but subtle control blocks and the way they configure it is ingenious, US designs are often intuitive and loud thinking approach (these are just my impressions please ignore if you disagree). The point is it is best to give the building blocks to the SIs or end users and let them mould them the way they want based on their imagination. Of course some design patterns and experience sharing in ecosystems and forums like these and Webinars and ICCs will help each other .
The new Citect 2018 and PlantPAX, also Siemens TIA Portal have changed their look&feel of their CMs to the grayish color, following the ISA 101 standard, example below:
These packages are just providing the vendor's own project essentially though designed using the ISA standards. They also heavily rely on you using their brand of plcs. You can use the standards to create your own templates and base project as well in ignition, ones that don't mould you to someone else's ideas of good design. I can't speak for Siemens, but of those I have used, there's not much comparison
I used multiple SCADA systems over the years and once designed a SCADA system from scratch by using Delphi, that’s many many years ago.
There are a lot to talk about each platform, good and bad. But all in one word, Ignition is by far the best I ever use.
Here is another standard from ISA for alarms. I think Ignition not only meets the requirements, but far exceeds it! In my opinion Ignition’s Alarms management system is by far the best I have ever seen!.
Alarm-Management-Standard.pdf (495.6 KB)