upgrading to citectscada version 6

Upgrading to CitectSCADA Version 6.0

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<insert month and year> edition for CitectSCADA Version 6.0

Manual Revision Version 6.0.

Printed in Australia.


Version 6.0 of CitectSCADA includes new features and developments that may impact the functionality of projects created using earlier releases.

The information presented here will help you identify whether or not your existing projects will be affected by these changes when you upgrade from an earlier version.

While most of the issues addressed here are not crucial to the successful operation of CitectSCADA, you should browse this information as it offers many tips and suggestions that will help you take advantage of improvements to the CitectSCADA functionality.

Version 6 project upgrade issuesRemoval of flashing color labels: Due to the changes required for True Color, flashing color labels are no longer supported in CitectSCADA.

If you have projects that use FLASH_XXX and/or NO_CHANGE labels, you must manually fix your fonts database and your Cicode. While the NO_CHANGE color label still exists, it cannot be used as a color label. Use TRANSPARENT instead of NO_CHANGE.

See Also Upgrading projects for True Color support

Duplicate tags: Version 6 will check more thoroughly for duplicate tags in a project. For example, previously if a tag was not referenced by a project, CitectSCADA would not check if there were duplicates of it. With Version 6, all tags are checked. Therefore, you may find that some duplicate tags appear in your project that you weren’t previously aware of.

ʺAddress on Bad Boundaryʺ error: This error may be encountered when compiling an old project on Version 6. See help for [General]CheckAddressBoundary on what this means and whether this flag will alleviate the problem.

Cicode error warnings: A warning will be raised when compiling Cicode if Cicode functions with default parameters are used before parameters with no default. While this is just a warning, it may be worthwhile investigating as it could indicate problems with your Cicode usage.

A warnings will also be raised when compiling Cicode if you call a function with an incorrect number of arguments. Again, while this is only a warning, it may indicate problems with your Cicode.


Upgrading projects for True Color support

CitectSCADA Version 6 automatically upgrades all existing projects to ensure compatibility with the new True Color functionality. However, you need to consider the following issues, as user intervention may be required.

Note: Backing up your projects before upgrading is recommended. Once you have upgraded your CitectSCADA projects to True Color, you cannot revert back to 256 colors.

Citect Color format. The Citect color format is now a 32‐bit RGB format. In hex, the bit for each part of the color is 0xRRGGBB. A new function called MakeCitectColour has been created to make Citect color values from component parts.

Flashing Color changes. Flashing color is now implemented as two linked colors to provide an on and off state. Graphics Builder will no longer display animated flashing colors, they will appear as a diagonally divided cell with the two color states represented.

Color Flood objects not supported True Color cannot effectively support Color Flood objects. Graphics Builder will still display the objects, however, they will be ignored by runtime and will not be functional. In order to assist with the removal of all Color Flood objects, a log file called ʺgraphicsupgrade.logʺ is created in the Citect Data directory. This file logs all occurrences of Color Flood objects found during the upgrade process, allowing them to be easily located and addressed.

Color Palette replaced by Color Favorites With Version 6, the concept of a color palette has been replaced with a set of ʺColor Favoritesʺ that offer much greater flexibility in the management and implementation of colors. During upgrade, the CITECT.PAL file defined for a project is used to calculate the initial color entries for the Color Favorites. If no palette file has been defined, the Include Project palette is used.

Fonts Database The fonts database is the main area where you will be required to check values. If the predefined labels (e.g. RED, GREEN, etc.) have been used, there will be no problem. However, some fonts will require reconfiguration to get the desired results if the entries contain palette indexes or the deleted flash labels (e.g. FLASH_RED).

Obsolete Cicode functions As color floods are no longer supported, calls to the function DspCol are ignored.

Cicode functions with changed arguments There are many Cicode functions that took palette index values as color arguments. These will need to change to using RGB parameters. Some functions require the color arguments to be expanded to two colors to allow for on and off states of a flashing color.

DspFont(FontType, PixelSize, FgndColr, BgndColr)

will become:

Upgrading to CitectSCADA Version 6.0 73

DspFont(FontType, PixelSize, ForeOnColor, BackOnColor, ForeOffColor, BackOffColor);

in order to support flashing colors when defining a new font.

DspMarkerNew(AN, Mode, Color)

will not support flashing colors. Color becomes an RGB parameter.

DspTrendInfo()

returns the primary pen color for types 11‐18, and the secondary (flash) color for types 19‐26.

PlotDraw(), PlotGrid(), PlotLine(), PlotMarker(), PlotScaleMarker(), PlotXYLine()

will not support flashing colors. The color arguments become RGB parameters.

WinCopy(), WinFile(), WinPrint() and WinPrintFile()

These Cicode functions take screenshots and do not work under anything but 256 color mode. They use a palette file to remap colors from the current CitectSCADA palette to an arbitrary palette, the most common usage of which is to swap black and white for pages that contain mainly black to minimize the amount of ink used when printing. While this cannot be done anymore, black and white can be manually swapped when printing.

Therefore, the ʺsPaletteʺ argument becomes ʺbSwapBlackWhiteʺ for these functions.

CitectColourToPackedRGB and PackedRGBToCitectColour

were created to make it easy to map colors to CitectSCADAʹs fixed palette. Now that Citect has no concept of a palette these functions convert from RGB values to Citect color format and back.

Changed parameters Several parameters have been changed to specify raw Citect colors instead of palette index values. The affected parameters now take an RGB value and do not support flashing colors. They are:

[Page]BackgroundColour

[Page]DynamicComBreakColour

[AnmCursor]Colour

[Trend]Cursor Colour,

In the CSV_Include project:

[Navigation]MenuBackColour

[Navigation]MenuForeColour

upgrading to citectscada version 6

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