Ignition Hub and Spoke Layout - Discussion

Ignition
21

Yes, multiple inheritance would be very, very nice.

22

So then the solution is not to have multiple smaller projects. The solution is to have one big project and trim down for different zones/areas/departments as needed.

23

Whatever you call it, the inherited projects, zones/depts and global, only hold what is common and should be shared. The child projects are where you put specific resources and constraints that are needed for those projects, like security settings.

IE a named query that should be available to all projects goes into global from my example, and a named query that is specific to only department2 projects goes into the department2 project, and likewise for the final projects. Shared views are in the global and zone projects, exclusive views go into the child projects where applicable. As you move down the inheritance tree, the more specific your resources should become.

24

Which approach did you decide on? Iā€™m encountering a similar situation and could use some insight.

25

We have one project that runs on a main Ignition server (full Ignition). There are 5 computers that function as clients and also have Ignition Edge for fallback.

  • Each edge gateway is configured with only the device connections for that "local area."
  • Each edge gateway runs the same project as the main Ignition server as the fallback.
  • The project is set up to show/hide/disable navigation on specific screens based on the area that is determined by which devices are connected to the gateway. (all = master, 1,2,3 = area 1, 4,5,6 = area 2... etc.).
  • Each "area" also has it's own tag provider on the master gateway.

Each edge gateway is connected to the central gateway with EAM.

  • There are tasks to "send" UDT definitions between the providers on the master gateway - triggered manually when UDT definitions are updated.
  • There are tasks to send the tags in each tag provider from the master to the corresponding gateway.
  • There is a task to send the project to each edge gateway.

Needs some scripting to get trend pens for tags to automatically update their history path based on which gateway the project is running from.

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