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Future of Screenmaker

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wbijlsma
wbijlsma ✭
in ScreenMaker

Hello,

I was wondering what the future of Screenmaker is.

Up to RS6.04, Screenmaker is still only available in 32 bit version, but now there's a notification that 32-bit support will end at RS6.06.

Is there a plan to continue with Screenmaker, or will there be a new platform at v6.06?

One of the reasons I'm asking, is that we've developed a standardized, multi-page HMI layout on Screenmaker. It has grown over the years, to where now it is displaying so much information, that it is getting quite laggy.

We have been considering starting over, but if Screenmaker isn't going to be around by middle of next year, then I'd rather just continue on for now, and not "redo" everything, twice..

Thanks for any insight.

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  • Rips
    Rips ✭
    Options
    Hello!
    Any news at this topic?
  • Evanmj
    Evanmj ✭
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    I hope they ditch it soon and quit selling it, or make it work better.  It has been nothing but problems for me.
    One particularly bad problem I had was that images were encoded into the resource file... so I had a 200kB bitmap added in, and it serialized it and put it in the resource file of every screen.  That made the memory footprint almost 5MB, which ate up the pendant's memory.  It would start sometimes, other times would crash with a 'not found' dll error.  It got worse when trying to troubleshoot it, because even after a rebuild with ALL images deleted, the resource files still contained a copy of the bitmap!  I had to manually clean out the temp folder so it would rebuild the resource files... then I used PNGs and got rid of all unnecessary images.  
    Just saying, my HMI is still pretty sluggish, but be sure you use really light weight images and clean out that tmp folder before each build.
  • Johannes Weiman
    Johannes Weiman admin
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    RobotStudio 6.06 will support 32-bit (with some limitations) and ScreenMaker.
    Johannes Weiman
    Software Engineer
    RobotStudio Team, ABB Robotics
  • steve42
    steve42 ✭✭
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    I find Screenmaker very useful to create bespoke HMI Screens for the Pendant, however it takes forever to troubleshoot and re-define I/O. I hope the ability to create user screens is not lost in future releases. Anything that replaces Screenmaker  must be simple to use and Bullet proof.... Please!

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