UDT or Manual Folder structure

Ignition
1

NB here. Should I develop a good UDT structure at the begining of the project or just go with organized folder structure. I know It is a broad question, but here are some of the details I can share.

  1. Company has Few sites
  2. Each site has various areas
  3. Each area has various packaging lines
  4. Each packaging line has few machine centers. (Filler, capper, line control etc etc) - All these are made by different vendors and over the years due to lack of standard best practices and huge number of PLCs of Rockwell and other brands were used.
  5. Each machine center has Tanks, Levels, drives, conveyors, pumps, motors, temperatures, pressure etc, etc etc

Under such fragmented setup is UDT route worth pursuing to have some standardization in ignition or maintain the fragmented system in ignition as well with good old folder systems to keep things organized?

What is the best way to look at the UDT. Should it be applied at lowest device level and then work my way up. then created nested UDTs for various machine centers. Or should I work from the top and start building. Really divided opinion on this. I would sincerely appreciate your help.

2

I work in a different industry (oil and gas), but have done material handling in the past. In Ignition, I'd highly recommend using UDTs where you can as it simplifies duplicating lots of tags along the way.

The way I build our UDT folder structure out though is in multiple folders/levels like this:

  • [OPC Server]
    • [Device Driver]
      • [Manufacturer/Company]
        • [Device/Equipment]

So for a lot of stuff in our industry we don't necessarily have instruments tied to equipment and temps/pressures/flows can be on a line anywhere, so we break ours down by instruments like this:

  • Ignition
    • ABB
      • ICS (Our Company)
        • TotalFlow
        • GC
    • Logix
      • ICS (Our Company)
        • AnalogInput
        • Motor
        • Valve

But you could do something similar in your instance with different vendors and drivers to keep them organized, then use those UDTs as needed for the various sites, areas, lines, cells. I would definitely build out a folder structure keeping your actual tags organized like that as well (site, area, line, cell, etc)