ESS ZONE

The support and update program for Steeplechase and Think & Do customers is now called ESS - Entivity Support Subscription. The program includes unlimited technical support, updates, software improvement modules, replacement licenses (if lost or stolen) and web access to update and driver downloads.

For more information, check out the ESS section on the Entivity web site!

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Microsoft XP Support

Entivity has completed XP testing and will support Windows NT, 2000 and XP in all products with the following release schedules:

• VLC 6.0 - Available Now
• Studio 7.0 - Available Now
• Live! - October, 2002

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Customer Profile of the Month

Read the entire story here!

Microplastics, Inc., an insert molding company, located in St. Charles, IL, needed a system to control a process for two similar parts. The company minimized downtime by reducing development and training time using Entivity Studio.

Studio HMI provided them a simple interface that allows operators to easily switch between the two types of parts that run on the same line.

Doug Vandenberg, Automation Engineering Manager, commented: "We developed this project at least 50% faster than expected because of the ease of Studio's flowchart programming. The seamless integration of the vision system and motor controllers into the flowcharts was great. The hardware system setups were simple to configure."

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NEW VLC Features!!!

The VLC now supports two new retentive memory platforms with Retentive memory driver version 6.1.

The driver is on the VLC 6.0 CD or is available on our website www.Entivity.com for ESS subscribers. This driver is compatible with VLC 5.2 or higher.

1. PCI card part number ICP DAS PCI-M512 It available at www.icpdas-usa.com. The card can appear in any PCI slot and will work on Windows NT, 2000 or XP.


2. PCMCIA flash memory card (also can be put on a PCI carrier board). This card can be used on Windows 2000 or XP only. This solution uses a generic PCMCIA SRAM card in a CardBus slot. The SRAM card must have attribute memory to support CIS, which describes the size of memory on the SRAM card. The SRAM cards with attribute memory, typically 2K, are available in many sizes. Usually the smallest size with attribute memory (256K) is much larger than required for most applications. There are many brands available, for example at: www.amtron.com/pccard/sram.htm. The SRAM card can be used in any available PCI based CardBus slot. Some target PCs may already have PCI CardBus slots. The SRAM card can also be used with a PCI CardBus adaptor card. Note that ISA PCMCIA adaptors are not supported. The Amtron PCD-RP-202CE with 2 CardBus slots is an example of an adaptor that works (see example). The single slot CardBus version PCD-RP-101CE should work equally well (see example). As should the single slot PCMCIA only version PCD-RP-101E.
   
   

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Power User's Corner

Power up at eAnswer!!!

Recipes can store expressions similar to a flowchart's calculation block. These expressions are evaluated from top to bottom starting at Expression 1.

· A recipe to cook rice as seen below, would first set rice to one then assign water to be two. (i.e. 2 * the value of rice which is 1). You can use all available functions like Sin, Cos, Tan, Radians…

· If you are using your HMI in Full Screen Mode, you can hide the black border by creating a background page and placing a rectangle that is slightly larger than the page on the background screen. Now set the background page of your screen by using File\Page Setup… and going to the Page Setup tab. Now place your objects based on the rectangle size not the page size. (NOTE. Any object not drawn inside the true page size will not be printed.)

Got questions? we've got eAnswer.

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Microsoft Visio powers Studio's
HMI Screen Development System

Visio & Studio Integration

Entivity screen shapes and Microsoft Visio make an unbeatable combination when you use them to create Studio HMI screens.

While in DesignCenter, try these two movement techniques on a screen set.

1. Move a shape to another page in the same
screen set: First select the shape you want to move. Then drag the shape down to a screen tab. Pause until the screen is displayed, then drag the shape up to where you want it.

2. Constrain your mouse movements: To
restrict the movement of the shapes to vertical
or horizontal direction, hold down the SHIFT key while you drag the shapes.

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Got Questions? eAnswer is the Place

Visit eAnswer on the Entivity Web Site!

The Entivity eAnswer system is a browser-based knowledgebase system that empowers Entivity's customers to find the information that they need, when they need it. eAnswer is available from the Support page on the Entivity Website.

All customers have had access to the eAnswer system since it's inception at the end of 1998. eAnswer has had almost 128,000 hits and almost 24,000 specific searches since then, helping customers across the globe find answers to issues even when their local time zones and holidays make contact difficult.

eAnswer is also an ideal way to submit technical support questions. When someone posts a new question here, emails are dispatched immediately to all Entivity support engineers notifying them of a new incident. It is not uncommon to receive responses to incidents posted late at night, weekends, and holidays.

Here are some tips on searching...

For step-by-step how-to info on these and other topics, visit eAnswer on the Entivity website.

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