Preparing CODESYS and Projects

The following provides details of the presets that exist for visualizations and the steps that are necessary for creating a visualization in a project.

Presets

When you create a visualization in a project, you should know that the following presets apply:

Scope Location Setting
Throughout CODESYS

Tools ‣ Options

Categories Visualization and Visualization styles
  • Visualization editor: display, handling
  • Paths of the basic text and image files
  • Visualization styles
Throughout the project

Project ‣ Project settings

Categories Visualization and Visualization profiles
  • “Properties handling” for the visualization elements
  • Paths of the basic text and image files
  • Symbol libraries with ready content
  • Visualization profile
Throughout the application Visualization Manager:
  • Unicode, CurrentVisu variable, multitouch, semi-transparency, memory size, data transmission, number of clients
  • Visualization styles
  • Language setting, language-specific font
  • Default keyboard configuration
  • Visualizations and visualization references
  • Font for each language
  • User management
Single visualization

Properties of the visualization object

Category Visualization
  • Purpose and scope of use
  • Size definition
Display variant of a single visualization Editor of the WebVisu or TargetVisu object
  • Start visualization, refresh rate, buffer size, html file name
  • Scaling options
  • Display options
  • Default text input

Project-specific updates of the visualization profile, the visualization styles, and the visualization symbol libraries are possible in Project ‣ Project environment of the respective tabs.

Customization of the visualization menu is performed in Tools ‣ Customize.

See also

Creating visualization objects in the project

For each visualization, you insert a Visualization object into your project like any other object. This also applies to visualizations that should be used later only within other visualizations. You can insert the new visualization object directly below an application, or below the root node of the Devices view (for availability throughout the entire project).

The required base libraries and other objects, such as the Visualization Manager, are inserted automatically. When you insert the visualization object below an application, the subordinate objects for the display variants supported by the device are also displayed.

Every visualization object can be edited separately in the visualization editor.

The following steps describe a simply example for creating an object for an application-specific visualization.

Requirement: A project is open. An application is created in the device tree.

  1. Select the application in the device tree. Click Add object ‣ Visualization in the context menu.

    ⇒

    The Add visualization dialog box opens. In the Symbol libraries table, there is at least the standard entry VisuSymbols Vx.x.x. (System), and possibly other installed symbol libraries.

  2. Accept the default name Visualization. Activate the VisuSymbols option. Then the visualization symbols (graphical objects) are contained in the library in the visualization project. Click Add to close the dialog box.

    ⇒

    In the device tree, the Visualization manager and Visualization objects are inserted below the application. Depending on the device in use, the TargetVisu and/or WebVisu objects are also created below the visualization manager.

    If a TargetVisu object or WebVisu object is created, then a VISU_TASK object is also created below the task configuration with an implicit program call.

    The required visualization libraries are added automatically in the Library Manager of the application.

    The visualization editor opens with the Visualization editor window and the ToolBox and Properties views.

    In the ToolBox view, there is a Symbols button for viewing the symbols from the library VisuSymbols.library.

  3. Now you can create the required visualization in the visualization editor.

  4. Note: You can create structured visualizations by using a frame element to reference one visualization in another visualization. Dialog visualizations are a special option for this. In this case, the input configuration of a visualization element is used for referencing.

Note

For creating an application-dependent visualization, insert the visualization object directly below the root node of the device tree. This corresponds to insertion in the POUs view. In this case, the visualization manager is not created with objects for the display variants.

See also