Multi-state symbols are a great way to emphasize
parts of our displays to catch a user's eye when certain
process values need our attention. In this video
we'll be converting some of our static and dynamic
symbols into multi-state symbols in order to make
those important process values really grab the user's
attention when it's most important. So here
in my boiler overview display, we've been
having problems with our drum level overflowing.
And what we did is we converted it to a
multi-state symbol and we are triggering the
multi-state symbol at 80.
So going back in time
to a place where drum level exceeded
80, we can see that it turns bright
red. And it quickly becomes the most important thing on the display.
So even if you know nothing about
the boiler overview process, seeing it
switch from blue to red when it reaches above
80, you can tell that this is really important.
So back in my mixing tank 1
display that we made in the last video,
my mixer being inactive is actually a really important
part of my process. And
being the same color, size, shape as all my other
values, doesn't really do it the justice it needs.
Let's go into build
mode and select the value and edit
its multi-state.
Here the first thing to do is select the
data source that your multi-state is going to trigger off of.
If you know the PI Point you can type it in
there or search for it there. But
since mixing tank 1 is in my AF
structure, I'm going to use this pull down menu to search my
AF tree. I know it's in production line 1
and there it is. And we'll set
the attribute to
mixer. And the next thing to do is choose the states.
So I want two states,
one for active, one for
inactive. All multi-state symbols also have another
state for when there is bad data but we'll leave that one
blank. The next one we'll
choose state one. So state one will take a value of
0. And because my PI Point is using a digital
state, 0's map to the string
active. And 1 is mapped to the string inactive.
So we'll change this to
a blue color because
if you remember 0 is mapped to active and we want that to be the
normal blue. But state 2 is mapped
to a 1 and the digital value that represents
is inactive. So we'll change the color to
red. If we ever
want to remove the multi state configuration, we can click this
button. So we'll hit OK instead.
And we can see here because it's currently
inactive, it changes to red.
And moving forward to where it's active, we can
see it turn back into blue.
The next thing we'll do is go back into build mode
and select our mixer.
And we can convert this static symbol into a
dynamic multi-state symbol by
editing its multi-state and we'll
repeat a similar process using
mixing tank 1's attribute called
mixer.
And it'll still have 2 states. Remember the first one is
active. And we'll remove the color change from
this state. And in state
2 we'll also remove the color change.
But we'll make it blink.
So I'll hit OK.
And then going back into run mode,
sliding back into a time when the mixer is inactive,
we can see
that the value turns bright red and the mixer starts to
blink. So we can see that the mixer is
inactive and there might be a problem with this part of my
process here.
Something else that's really important to my
process is this level here. This level
like the one in my boiler overview
display is at risk of overflowing when it gets too high.
So we'll convert it into a multi-state
symbol but this time I'm going to use 3
states. The first state will
be a normal operation state and that will
go from 0 - 8. And I'll keep it this blue color.
The next one I
want to be a caution state and we'll color that
yellow from 8 to 9. And the final
state we'll use is a warning state. And we'll put that in
red and make it blink.
So editing the multi-state,
[inaudible] this time
we'll use the
attribute level
and we are going to bump the states up to 3 states.
So now we have to choose the
boundaries of our states. And we
can see here that the lower level is bound
at 1 because it's grey and I can't change it.
That's because the PI Point is configured to only have
values between 1 - 10.
So the first state like I said will be between
1 - 8
and will remain blue.
The next state, we can see here that the lower
bound is set to the previous state's
upper bound and we can change the upper bound.
So state 2 will be between 8 - 9 and be
yellow. And finally state 3
which is again the lower bound
of state 3 is state 2's
upper bound. And the upper bound of state 3 is set to the
tags expected maximum value.
So I don't need to change these values. But I will change
the color change to red and it make it
blink. So hitting
OK, we've now converted it to a multi-state.
And we'll run mode and go back in time to a place where it
exceeds 8.
So we can see here that it turns yellow once it's above
8. And going back in time a little bit
more, once it's above 9 it turns bright
red and flashes. In this video we
learned how to convert dynamic and static
symbols into multi-state symbols. And we can
see that they are a great way to let your process engineers
know exactly when something needs their attention.