Error with external tool frames?

Hi Anders,



teach a new point with an active external tool where you can't jog around and you'll get no configuration for that point at least in RS. The config dialogue box is simply empty. When you change the tool to an attached one, then you'll get a config.



I will try to jog and teach with an external tool with the FlexPendant and tell you how it works later.



Right now I have another problem with VC who f**ked all of my newly created signals because of a parser error. I hadn't backed up yet, but restarted first. No good choice, so let's start again from scratch. :-(



Again not too amused,

Lohengrin



P.S. RS is still very young and I would like to have faster updates in shorter time frames until it is stable enuff and production safe. Then a new update every 3 months is ok, but not right now. I'm walking on very thin ice here, because a customer chose to take IRC 5 despite everybody warned him because it might not ready for prime time yet. I don't talk about beta, but we'll see how it'll work in practice when the robots are delivered. With this kind of problems that cost so much time already in offline programming I'm not too convinced. Only my personal opinion.



BTW: Getting signals into the controller is a real pain. Always opening the dialog box and hacking in the data. What about importing a textfile with all data in RS-Online, of course in XML? Then I wouldn't have to hack in again all the stuff I have lost now, and that was 3 hours work. With XML we could do all signal stuff in a database and then export it and import it into the controller.Lohengrin38724,8618518518

Hej Fredrik,



-I could send you a station file, but it's 85 MB big. In this station I have no problem reproducing the error with the missing configs as I described above. If you don`t need more than the station file then gimme ftp and I'll up it.



-The problems with the IOs happened again and I also found a workaround, which I will describe exactly now:



In RSO I created a bunch of signals. Then I created some System Inputs and System Outputs with some of these signals. I did a (warm) restart (in RSO) of the controller and everything was fine. Then I created even more signals, and stepped over some signals which names I misspelled, and changed them. After a new restart the controller halted because of a system error, because the signals I changed were linked to some of the system signals, and of course they didn't work anymore and caused the system error. From RS I got into FlexPendant (I got no connection with RSO anymore) to change this now wrong system signals, but when doing this with one system signal, the controller forces me to do an immediate restart, what I did. It restarted again with a system error, because there have been more than one changed signals and corresponding system signals. This second time I didn't got into FP anymore, nor into RSO.



The workaround was that I removed the system from the station, connected to the controller again with a cold start, which of course erased all of my signals.



I had this again the last days, but now I do a backup before doing restarts after signal changes or additions. After the cold start the restore of this backup works flawless and I can change the signals that caused the system error.



So it seems that the signal parser doesn't look at maybe linked system signals when changing signal names.



-I know that I can import that IO.cfg (here it is EIO.CFG in SYSPAR), but only from a backup that I did first. So there is no direct import option in RSO or anywhere else, which I miss. And the format of the cfg is not really conformant to something I can get out of e.g. a database, where I preferrably like to maintain my signals for different projects. So here I think an open format to explicitly import into the controller like XML would be fine. I didn't tried to remove blank lines in the EIO.CFG while directly editing signals there or other reformatting to make it better editable, because I simply don't have the time to test stuff like that right now.



It works with backup, editing and restoring, but this is a way which is not obvious and might not be automated. An explicit import option for config files, be it only for signals, would be obvious.



Thanks for all your help and responsiveness, I try to do my best to tell you what problems I face here and how to reproduce them, but right now this particular project I do here does not give me too much time for it right now. I am of course also interested in getting better versions of your all-in-all great and from all robot manufacturers most advanced controller-, offline- and simulation software, but our customers are interested in results, and not programmers problems nor -dreams. And right now it's of no use for me when you know this problems, but I have to stick for months with the current versions and have to develop workarounds for every problem in this case of tough time pressure. So please understand my frustration sometimes and don't understand me wrong - RS+ is a really cool piece of software.



Hej da,

LohengrinLohengrin38728,7685185185

Hi Fredrik,



I deleted all the unneeded stuff in the file, so compressed it is around 150k. Do you also need the system?



I read now how I can import cfg-files into the controller. This is still not what I expect, but gets into the direction, so thanks for the hint.



All the best,

Lohengrin

Hi Fredrik,



I prepared an email with the data you need, so pls give me a valid email address of yours (look also in pm).



All the best,

Lohengrin