Building a custom UI Object with GT Designer 2 for Mitsubishi GOT 1000
Dieser Artikel wurde von Simon Biemer geschrieben.
Introduction
The graphic operation terminal (GOT) is designed in a way that it can be installed on the panel surface of a control panel or operation panel and connected to the program connector of the PLC inside the control panel. The GOT allows the user to monitor and change various devices of the PLC while checking the screen.
GT Designer 2 is a screen design program used to create HMI screens for the entire line of Mitsubishi GOTs (Figure 1). It is equipped with a parts library, a range of touch-switches and lamps, screen preview functionality, a GOT communication settings utility, and a project consistency check function. Together, these features combine to make GT Designer 2 a platform that produces screens that simplify the control interface between the user and the machine.
After having installed GT Designer 2, start up the screen creation software, execute the basic settings, connect your PC to the GOT, and you are ready to start your screen development.
Screens
In GT Designer 2 you have three different types of screens that can be created for the GOT. First you have a so called base screen, which is just a normal screen. Window screens are displayed over base screens and can be used as a dialog or pop-up window. Furthermore there exist report screens for data output using report function.
Switches and Lamps
Switches and lamps are basic objects. Usually a lamp shows the status of a specific device. For example a bit lamp turns ON/OFF according to the ON/OFF status of the bit device whereas a word lamp changes lamp color according to the word device value. Switches are similar to buttons. They are used for turning ON/OFF a bit device, changing the value of a word device, switching base screen and/or window screen or for using them as a multi action switch to perform multiple actions.
Creating a custom slider
Equipped with a parts library where you find a lot of useful objects even with different styles, GT Designer 2 makes the development of your first screens quite simple. But after a while, you will recognize that you will have to build custom objects for specific requirements. In this tutorial, a six tick slider is to be build (Figure 2) instead of the already existing four tick slider (Figure 3).
First we have to layout our new slider and create a single image for every possible state. After the layout is designed, we import one of the images (Bitmap or JPEG) Figure->Import Image… and place it somewhere on stage. To assign the image to a switch or lamp, we have to add it to the Library Image List. Open View->Library->User Library->My Favorites and select the image. Click the register button (document icon with the plus) in the opened Library Image List window. Repeat these steps for every image corresponding to the states of the slider. After that, delete all images from stage. Don’t be afraid, you won’t lose them. They still exist in the user library.
For combining all images we require a container. Therefore we choose Object->Lamp->Word Lamp and place it somewhere on stage. Select the word lamp on your stage and double click on it. In the opened configuration window we first add five more states to the object with the NewState button. The current state will be shown under Selected State. If we want to assign an image to the selected state click Others… under section called Display Style. In the opened Image List select Library and then My Favorites. There we find our imported images. Choose the one which corresponds to the selected state and click OK. Choose another state and repeat these steps until all images are assigned to their corresponding states. If your images are bigger than the default ones, you will recognize that the lamp did not adjust the size automatically. Set the dimension of the lamp manually to those of your images and everything looks like it should. The visual object is finished now, but we still cannot handle any user touches or inputs.
Remember, switches allow user input. Therefore we require six switches to navigate through every state of our slider. For more flexibility we add six multi action switches to our slider. We choose multi action switches, since we are usually handling more than just the states of our slider. Go to Object->Switch->Multi Action Switch and place it on one of the possible hit areas of the slider track. Select it and double click on it. Choose the Lamp tab and set Shape in section Display State to None to make it transparent. Select the Basic tab where you can define the Actions which are triggered when the user hits the switch. Do this for every switch. Now we are finished with our custom UI Object.
If you understand the basic objects and know some tricks it can be quite simple to build a custom object with GT Designer 2. Summarized, it can be said that building UIs with GT Designer 2 is nearly the way I expected it and it works like most other graphical editors. You will find that the development with GT Designer 2 is very similar to the development of other popular screen design programs you are already used to.