Created Date: April 13,2019

Created by: skyfox

Please.....

Help me love this thing without being subjected to DIALOG HELL. In other words, DON't TRY TO SAVE ME FROM MYSELF!

For starters....

How about just only two buttons to go on-line with a PLC?

A simple dialog that says, even if incompatibilities are detected between what is on the PLC vs what is on my PC.

Button #1. Send My Program (what is in my PC), to the PLC that I am trying to connect to. In other words, Download EVERYTHING. And I mean EVERYTHING.

YES. THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT I AM WANTING TO DO.

Button #2. Update my program that I am working on at the moment (in essence, discard last 12 hours of my work), with what is currently in the PLC, no matter how worthless it is.

Again, YES. THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT I AM WANTING TO DO.

Instead of, casting doubt and giving me other choices by asking...

Are you sure?

Really?

Are you Really, Sure?

Are you Really, Really, Really, Sure?

You know something terrible might happen right?

Click the option button if you are OK with offsetting earths magnetic alignment. (OK. That was bit of a stretch)

Do you have legal representation for what you are wanting to do?

What would the Kardashians do in this situation?

Did you drink last night?

Or, are you still under the influence from two nights ago? (True that)

I only ask this because this seems like a ridiculous request.

Again, just allow ME to crash and burn on my own without the DIALOG OVERLOAD.

literally, I have to DO-MORE (# of steps), to enter in a "SINGLE " line of code.

And...

The 2nd reason for my constipation.

When a contact is deleted, why delete the power rail portion of it and complain about it later? Why Not just delete the contact or the box instruction and leave the power rail in tact? This goes Whaaaaaaaay back to my DL-06 nightmare. But that was Sooooo Loooooooooooong Taaaaaaaaa EEEEEE ummmmmm ago.

More gripes to come I am sure. But still Loving it, even with all its quirks.

OK. Next.

How about a "LIMIT Check " box function?

Limit Low = 200

Limit High = 202

Test DO

If in-within limit, Turn on C1.

The inverse of this, would be amazing as well as it does wonders in the hated AB world.

CHEERS!

Created Date: April 13,2019

Created by: BobO

We agree. It has been a recent topic of discussion.

Two historical values at Host:

1. Never, ever, take a ‘feature’ away.

2. Never, ever, do something that might possibly be deemed unsafe or inconvenient without prompting.

Both are wrong.

Some stuff should be removed and replaced with better stuff. It may be an inconvenience...at first, but if the new stuff is better, users get past it quickly.

Prompts eventually get ignored due to answering them over and over. They cease to be effective.

We can do better.

Created Date: April 13,2019

Created by: Mike Nash

While not as simple as you are looking for on a limit check (good request BTW), ALDEV and ALHILO might be useful.

I went from hating the dialog to actually reading it (after the no-time-gotta-get-it-done phase) and decided I am OK with it. There are currently so many things that are going to force a change to program mode to actually load into the PLC that I really need to know about it if a machine is running.

Created Date: April 13,2019

Created by: BobO

There are a few things I would think are non-negotiable, but here's the thing, I only know the software packages I 've developed professionally. I don't write PLC programs for a living, and Host in general spends very little time studying other packages. That's both good and bad, and I think it shows in both good and bad ways. We'd like to change that.

Skyfox's comments are timely. Maybe we can use this thread to talk through some this as a community of users. We would welcome the discussion and this will affect our work immediately.

Let's start with writing the project to the PLC. I would be very uncomfortable writing to the PLC without any form of ack from the user. Does anyone disagree with that? Assuming not, what would you prefer that prompt look like? We use it to tell what's being written and give you more control, but that sounds like a point of contention. We 're listening. And if you disagree with the prompt, please explain why. Do other brands write without an ack?

And does anyone have thoughts on the new connect/link facility new for 2.5? I 've heard nothing.

Created Date: April 13,2019

Created by: Mike Nash

...

And does anyone have thoughts on the new connect/link facility new for 2.5? I’ve heard nothing.

Well, while I have installed it, I haven't played with it yet because I just don't feel like configuring all the toolbars and options and such right now. So I have left it untouched, figuring I will probably do the registry export/edit/import thing from 2.3 along with the other file copies.