Foxbro DCS

[Nil 0]

Dear all, Have been using Siemens PCS7 since many years and now we are thinking to use Foxboro. It would be of great help if someone could let me know how good Foxboro is when compared to other DCS Vendors... If already some one has used both PCS7 and Foxboro, u can let me know ur feedback accordingly. Meanwhile I got a very little information regarding Foxbro A2 System ..... and it goes like this For a plant having 500 IO Points, the total number of CPUs that come into pciture is approx 9. At this point do the Client / Consultant agree for so many CPUs to be scattered in a plant ??? Does the same kind of Architecture hold good for Foxbro I/A System DCS ??? As far I know, for ABB/Siemens/Yokogawa DCS, only CPU will control the entire plant of 1500+ IO.... Regards Nil

[Ken Moore 23]

The A2 product is more of a DCS light, better than PLC's but not a real DCS system. With the latest I/A controllers, it all depends on what you are doing, you can handle all the I/O in one controller, but if you are doing lots of sequence's or math, you may need more than one.. I never load a new controller more than 60%. The Foxboro I/A system is in the same league as Honeywell, Yokogawa, etc....

[Nil 0]

Hey Ken, Many thanx for ur answer. Do both A2 and I/A share a common Engg and Operating Software OR both have different sets of ES & OS software..... Cheers Nil

[Ken Moore 23]

I've never considered the A2 series, so have never used the software, do not know if it's the same or not.

[Nil 0]

With Siemens I had the opportunity to create User Defined Blocks using Pascal. Upon compilation the Pascal Code generates Fucntion BLocks ( FB ) which could be used in the project. This facility helped me a lot in many projects. Does I/A or A2 have this kind of High Level Language facility for user defined Blocks ?? Does Foxbro has any online forum to post related questions??

[Ken Moore 23]

There is a mailing list, and pretty good history take a look here: http://www.thecassandraproject.org/ With I/A you can write custom apps in C, or there on built in language called, HLBL ( high level batch language) which is kind of like pascal with little C thrown in for flavor. Ken