RsLogic v16.03 - Teamwork

[andyhill 1]

Our projects are starting to get bigger and more than one developer is needing access to change the ACD file. Is there a "teamwork" server that will assist with 2 people working on the same source file. Most of our code is done within addon's so we find that we have to take the PLC off-line to make the change to the add-on before re-download in the PLC program Project is fully redundant so we are stuck on Version 16.8 firmware until 18.5 comes along later this year or early next year. Thanks in advance Andy

[paulengr 44]

First the obvious. Set up a shared network drive somewhere. One person can have a file open at a time. If two or more attempt it, the others will get read-only copies. The Allen Bradley solution is RS-Asset Centre. AC is a little confusing as to what it does but the upshot is several things: 1. At it's heart, it's a document control system. You can check-in/out documents. It automatically keeps track of changes, and it will keep track of different revisions. Although it was specifically intended for PLC program files, device configuration files, etc., you can use it on ANY documents. 2. It also contains a special captive version of RS-Linx Gateway. If you use this, delete RS-Linx off of all the PC's that are used for programming. Then when they access a PLC, they need to come through the AC server. It needs this in order to be able to do access control. Access control is fairly fine grained...as in you can not only do blanket things like "no forces" (or track forces), but you can allow/disallow access to specific tags, routines, programs, etc. 3. It also has a "disaster recovery" feature if you pay for it. AC will automatically go out and upload all your programs periodically with this feature and keep track of the changes that were made even setting changes by operators. You can then do a download directly from AC in the event that you have to for instance swap a PLC out and the setting changes and the like will match the last time the PLC was scanned by AC. Alternatively, you can use pretty much ANY of the document control (revision control) systems out there. Doing a google search will net you dozens of free solutions as this sort of product is very mature and has been freely available in the Unix world since the 80's. There are Windows ports of the same utilities. Something a bit simpler is "syncback". It won't do RCS but it is a freeware program that will at least keep multiple laptop copies of files synchronized. If your intent is for more than one person to be able to EDIT at a time, that's a horse of a different color. None of the above will help you. Best you can do is do what you are already doing (developing in separate AOI's or separate routines/programs). Code a common, agreed-upon interface (tags in the global address space) FIRST and agree what the meanings of those tags are. Then you can simply merge your files together later on. This is also known as "contract programming" in the PC world...on large projects, it allows different programmers to work on different pieces of a very large system such as the Windows operating system simultaneously. The merging process is not automated, and this is often the case in many projects. But there are just too many variables involved to be able to go deeper.