Associating OPC Tags and External Controller Ports

If the ports have been manually created, you can associate the ports to the tags available on the OPC server.

Before you begin:
  • The System and Device Designer workbench should be opened in the Live Simulation environment.
  • An External Controller is already created.
  • The connection to an OPC server must be active and the list of OPC tags available.
Related Topics
Creating Controller Ports

  1. Enable the connection to the OPC server (see Creating Controller Ports).

  2. Select an OPC tag in the OPC Items Browser area.



  3. Select Busy_PR01 in the External Control's IOs area and click Associate an OPC Item to a Port .

    If the type of the OPC item is different from the External Controller port type, a warning is issued.



    Click Yes to overwrite the External Controller port type.




    • Name: the existing name is not modified.

    • Type: in this case, it is overwritten by the OPC tag type.

    • Direction: the direction is changed only if the direction is available in the OPC server.

    • OPC Item Name: the parameter is filled or overwritten.

    • Comments: if the comment already exists, it is not overwritten.

  4. Select another tag in the OPC Items Browser area.



  5. Click Associate an OPC Item to a Port .



    As the type of the OPC Item and the port are the same, only OPC Item Name is changed.

  6. To check that the tags defined in the OPC server have not been changed since the creation of the External Controls IOs, click Check .

    When the command is executed, each external control IO is reviewed as follows.


    • If the associated tags (column Parameter) does not exist in the OPC server, an error is issued.





    • If the OPC item is available but its quality for read/write operation is bad, a warning is issued and the tag appears with the Inconsistent status.



    • If the OPC item is available but its quality for read/write operation is uncertain, a warning is issued and the tag appears with the Uncertain status.

    • If the types and directions are not compliant with the ones defined in the OPC server, a dialog box proposes an update.



    • If everything is correct,



  7. Click OK to close the Communication Protocol Properties dialog box.

You can now launch a simulation on the External Control block to test the connection with the OPC server.