In this video I'll show you how you
can leverage attribute traits in the Asset Framework to
better define your data helping you and your users
visualize data more easily. I'll also show you
how to add limit traits to your
attributes. But first what is an attribute trait?
As we know, an element is a logical
grouping of data, commonly a piece of equipment
like a wind turbine. And attributes
represent individual pieces of data belonging
to the element like the turbine's wind speed
and rotor speed. An attribute trait is
a very common piece of data. An example of
an attribute trait is a high
limit. Our turbine's wind speed has a high limit of
110 and it's rotor speed has a high limit of
25. So as you can see, high limits are quite
common. The Asset Framework now
includes an attribute trait that can be used to
define high limits. Other attribute traits
included in the current release include other
limit conditions and forecasted values. Additionally, we will
continue to add more attribute traits in future
releases. For instance location
traits such as longitude and latitude
are being added in the next release. As you
can see here, an attribute trait might be found directly under
an element or as a child attribute.
So what's the point of using attribute traits?
As we mentioned, these traits are common and are commonly
used for the same purpose. Therefore some attribute
traits will automatically change the way
visualization tools behave. For example the
maximum and minimum traits are used as the maximum and
minimum values of the gauge symbol in PI Coresight.
Attribute traits are also easy
for users to find and use in our visualization
tools. Let's see this in action. I'm going to demonstrate
how to set limit traits.
Here I have an AF Database for a wind
farm with 50 wind turbine elements.
And I also have a dashboard in PI Coresight
that I use to monitor my wind turbines.
You see that in the dashboard, I have a wind
speed gauge but this gauge doesn't really make
much sense right now since the wind speed
rarely reaches 1000 miles per hour. So I'm
going to create limit traits for the wind speed attribute
in my AF Database to improve this dashboard.
So I'm going to go back to PI System Explorer
and since these wind turbines are
based on a template, I'll make my change at the
template level by navigating to
library and then under element templates,
to my wind turbine template.
I'm going to scroll down and find my wind speed
attribute which is here.
To set a limit trait, you simply need to right click on the
attribute and select limits.
This is also where you would go to set
forecast values.
There are 7 limit traits available. To create
a new limit trait we simply check the box in the left most
column.
And to change the value, we'll double click on the value
column and enter the value that we want.
So I could change this if I wanted for example to 10 miles per
hour. But I'm just going to leave it at 0.
So what we've just created is a static
limit trait but as you can see, we
actually have a data reference column as well. This means attributes
can actually reference a lot of different data
types including formulas, PI Points, table look-ups, essentially
any data type that you would use to define a normal
attribute. So let's see how this works. We are going to
set our maximum trait and this time we will
click on the data reference and in the drop down
list, we'll select PI Point. This is the option you should
use if you want to reference a PI Point or
another attribute as your trait. And to configure
the data reference, we'll click on
settings and then we'll click on the ellipses
here.
You'll notice that this is the same PI Point data reference
dialogue that you would get if you were setting a PI Point data
reference for a normal attribute. So here we can
either choose a PI Point or
another one of our attributes. In our case we have an
attribute that captures the highest recorded wind speed
for the turbine. So that's the value that I want as my
maximum. So I'll select the attribute
and then in a drop down list, select highest recorded wind
speed and click OK.
So now let's set our high
limit and since our high limit depends on the model of the
wind turbine, we'll use a table look-up as the data
reference this time since the information
can be found within a table. So we'll click on data reference
and select table look-up.
Click on settings and the
ellipses. And we get the table look-up data reference
dialogue, again the same one we'd get for a normal
attribute. If you need any help with this step, please
refer to our other video on this topic. So I'm
going to select my table which is
the model specification table, the results column which is
my wind speed high limit. And
I'll put my condition. So the model
should be the value of my model
attribute. And I'll go ahead and click
OK. When we are done setting our limit
traits, we can go ahead and click OK.
Now we see that next to our wind speed
attribute, we have a little plus sign. And if we
expand it, we'll see that we have three child
attributes for the three limits that we just set. But
as you'll remember, we are in our element
template. So let's go see what this looks like at the element
level. So if you scroll
down to the wind speed and we
expand it, we can
see that we get values for each one of our
attributes. And if we navigate to a different
turbine, we can see that we
have different values according to our data
reference. In order to save our changes, we'll go
ahead and click the check in button at the top here.
Now let's go see how our limit traits have affected our
dashboard. Note that it could take a few minute for your
changes to take effect in PI Coresight.
Now that we've set the minimum and maximum
for the wind speed attribute, we can see the range of our gauge has
changed. And now the maximum value in the
gauge is the maximum limit trait. And since the
maximum is coming from an attribute, this
gauge will automatically be adjusted as the
maximum recording wind speed changes. And it's also
unique for each turbine. Let me show
you yet another enhancement to my dashboard.
Let's say I want to make this circle into a
multi-state symbol that flashes red if the
wind speed is higher than the high limit that we just set.
To do this, I'll right click on the
circle and select configure
multi-state. And I'll drag and drop the wind
speed into the multi-state attribute section. And we
can see that automatically the multi-state symbol is
configured using the limit traits that we set in the Asset
Framework. So I'm going to change this one to
red and blinking.
And this one to green
and very quickly I've been able to configure a multi-state
symbol. Additionally as you'll remember,
the high limit is actually coming from a
table and is different for the different turbines. Before you
had to put a specific value to define the states of the multistate
symbol. But now since the limits
are used, these can be different for the
different turbines.
So let's go check a different
turbine. And we see that our multi state
symbol is indeed working correctly.
As you can see, attribute traits
offer a great opportunity to enhance your existing
dashboards and to improve your users experience.