New Features in V3-3

Release Date - 1st August 2005

 

The following table lists the headline enhancements included in release V3-3.  For a full listing of all the enhancements and bug fixes included in this release see the Release Notes.

 

For more details on each of the new features, click on the links in the table below:

 

Component:

Feature:

Purpose:

stPro/stOCX

Tabbed Sessions

stPro now allows multiple Session files to be loaded concurrently within a single instance of the application.  Each Session is given it's own Tab allowing the user to switch sessions with a single mouse click.

Predicted Values

 

stPro now includes a mechanism where predicted values for a pen can be trended on a plot along with the current live value.  Any number of predications can be trended for each pen.

 

Note:  As with live trends, stPro does not make up or calculate values for predictions. The actual prediction values that are trended must have been written to an OPC Data Source by a suitable 3rd party modelling application - such as a constrained multi-variable controller - so that stPro can retrieve the values and combine the data with live values read from the Process.

Launching Tabular History

It is now possible to launch Tabular History from stPro or stOCX.  This seeds the item list with the pens from the selected 'parent' Plot.

New Plot Options

Several new Plot controls have been added for V3-3:

  • Reload plot - allows an individual plot to be quickly reloaded thereby discarding any changes that have been made to the plot.

  • Fit to View - All Plots, recalculates the scales for pens in Automatic scale more for all Plots within the active session.

  • Save All - saves all the Plots within the active Session.

"Plot Locked"

A new registry key has been added to Sapphire called "PlotsLocked".  When set this prevents the user from making changes to any of the plot windows.  It is intended for Operator use where it is important that the same plots are displayed at all times.

Cloning Pens

 

It is now possible to trend the same item multiple times within a single plot.  This is particularly useful with X-Y Plots as it allows a number of Y-variables to be plotted against a common X variable. See the Item List Area section for more details.

Mapping multiple Items

 

It is now possible to assign more than one pen at a time by selecting multiple entries on the Plot Properties Mapping tab.  See the appropriate section of the Item List Area chapter for more details.

Copying Pen Settings

 

A new option exists on the Pens dialog allowing one or more settings from the current pen to be quickly copied to all the other pens within the selected plot.

Information Display

The Session Toolbar has a new option of "Information" - this displays the details of the active Session such as the name of the loaded Session file, the names and data sources of each of the plots and the active User Preferences file.

New File Association

A new file association of ".sphcsv" has been introduced for stPro for CSV files.  This allows CSV files to loaded directly into stPro by double clicking.

Additional stOCX API's

New methods have been added to provide better control of the Pens in a plot.  These are:

Tabular History

 

General Enhancements

New features in the Tabular History include:

Additional Tabular History API's

New methods have been added to provide better control of the Item drop down.  These are:

Sapphire Collector

Device or Cache Reads

The user can now specify whether the Collector should perform Device or Cache reads on a per DL basis.

Automated DL Failover

The Collector now supports the concept of Primary and Failover OPCServers on a per DL basis.  Should an OPCServer failed to respond or shutdown then the Collector will automatically check the availability of any defined Failover OPCServers.

DL Status

It is now possible to turn a DL Offline.   This prevents any data from being scanned from the underlying OPCServer for all the SDRs within the Collector.

Offline Items

The Collector now distinguishes between Items that have been turned Offline automatically by the Collector and those that have been manually turned of by a user.  This makes it much easier to recover from an OPCServer outage where items were automatically turned Offline as the appropriate items can be differentiated from those that users have set Offline manually.

Exporter

New Format file

A new template format file called "DMC CLC" is now delivered with the product.

Installshield

Previous Install Options

The SapphireTrend Installshield now remembers the options chosen during previous installations to minimize the user interaction required for an upgrade.

General

Copy to Clipboard

The Sapphire Trend clients now provide a copy option for list controls.  This allows the contents of list dialogs to be copied to the clipboard for external analysis.