ControlLogix Training – How much is TOO much?

[Guest]

I'm adding a new section to my website – and before I let it "go live" to the general public, I'd appreciate it if the forum members would take a look and see if I've done anything really stupid ... I do my own website work – and there's been quite a lot of midnight oil burned over this project ... mistakes are pretty much guaranteed – so please let me know if you spot anything ... any type of criticism will be welcomed and appreciated ... the general idea is this: I'm trying to "catalog" the various ControlLogix skills that I teach in my five-day boot camp style classes ... the new website addition is based on something like a "menu" approach – which (hopefully) will allow a visitor to browse through the different topics and see what "looks familiar" ... here's a quick scenario: let's say that a new customer calls me up and wants to send some employees to me for ControlLogix training ... that's great ... but now the question quickly becomes: "Which specific ControlLogix topics will these guys need to learn?" ... for examples, are we talking about: (1) Ladder Diagrams (that's pretty much a "given") (2) Structured Text? (nothing turns "green on the screen" here) (3) Function Block Diagrams? (4) Sequential Function Charts? (5) Equipment Phases? (6) PID control? (7) PIDE control? ("E" for "Enhanced" – with 165 settable parameters) (8) Motion control? (9) Ethernet? (10) ControlNet? (11) DeviceNet? and the list goes on ... please keep in mind that my boot camp classes are NOT "programming classes" – but rather they're intended to take a bunch of raw recruits through enough hands-on exercises so that they can go back to their plants and "hit the ground running" with the skills required to troubleshoot and maintain their plants' equipment ... the good news is that I'm pretty well set up (with lab equipment and course material) to handle ALL of those topics ... but here's the problem: I can NOT cover ALL of the topics in just one five-day class – not even at a "boot camp" pace ... (yes, I could probably "cover" the material with a bunch of PowerPoints – but NOT with the actual HANDS-ON exercises that my customers are counting on (and paying for) ... so ... what I'm hoping is that I'll soon be able to talk a phone-in customer through a "guided tour" of my new "ControlLogix Topics" website section ... something like: "Now go down to number 018 and click on Equipment_Phases ... does this stuff look familiar?" ... then once we've got the target(s) properly nailed down, it should be a lot easier to get the training done ... once again, I'd sincerely appreciate any criticism, suggestions, or opinions that you'd care to offer on what I've done so far ... (I'll be adding more topics later as time allows – but I don't want to work myself to death if the whole idea is nutty) ... if you'd like to take a look, just follow the link below my forum signature – and enter my website ... once inside, the menu on the left has an "invisible" button at the bottom (in the white space right under the "Contact Us" button) ... please remember that this section is still "under construction" so don't expect anything really polished – and please don't hesitate to offer any corrections – or suggestions ... one more thought for completeness ... of course if a new customer is able to send me a sample copy of the .ACD files that he uses, then I can easily put my finger on what subjects will be necessary – and how deep we'll need to dig into each topic ... the problem with that approach is that most of the larger companies that I deal with consider their programs to be "proprietary" and/or "trade secret" type information ... folks, it's really HARD to hit a bull's eye when you're not sure what the target even looks like ... so – if you get a chance, please feel free to look around ... and by all means let me know if you have suggestions to improve it ... and if you don't feel like typing up your comments – just pick up the phone and give me a call ... it's always a lot easier to brainstorm that way ... (my phone number is on the "Contact Us" page of the website) ... thank you for your attention ... . Edited 1 Nov 2013 by Ron Beaufort

[Michael Lloyd 85]

Way back, before CLX ver 10, I worked for a company that merged with a company that was heavily vested in the Siemens S7. We had no S7 experience. All of our stuff was TI505 and DirectLiogix (we thought that was the only PLC worth using lol. Times have changed. Now it's "whatever... it's all just bits and bytes). So... we had to learn the evil S7. Personally... I was intrigued by all of the languages that we could write in. The rest of the group, not so much. Since I was a the mangler (manager) it was on me to get everyone up to speed. So, I asked the Siemens rep to create a 2 week class that was designed to teach us how to structure a program and, more importantly, teach us how to recreate some failry large Special Function programs that I had written for the TI505 in structured text and turn them into a function block (one was over 200 lines long). Week 1 was getting around the software and week 2 was all Structured Text. The point to that long boring story is that the custom class that they built for us is the ONLY PLC training class that I have ever enjoyed or felt that it had value. All of the others were freakin Power Point presentations put on by some "phone answerer" that had trouble spelling PLC (which I know you aren't). That is why I bold faced the "send me a program" part of your post. As you know, CLX is such an open platform that it's hard to come up with a generic training class. We all "do programming" in CLX (and S7, etc) differently. Especially when it comes to the structure of tags. The guys that support me, Ie the people that are in the field trying to figure out what is going on, would need to learn from one of my programs.

[Bill Linne 0]

Ron: The intro or 'overview' page looks very good. I cannot, however, get any of the topics to 'expand' to more info. Should those links be functional now?

[Guest]

to Bill Linne ... yes, the items that have little red "freckles" by them should be able to link to the "detail" pages ... if they didn't work for you earlier then I've got a good hunch why they didn't – and it's exactly the type of "glitch" that I was hoping you guys could help me find ... I thank you sincerely for pointing out my oversight ... when I put the "hotspots" (link activators) on the graphics, I stretched the active region to just cover each item's text (its "name") ... I've got a hunch that you were clicking on the item's NUMBER – and not on the text itself ... in other words, I'll bet that you did exactly what I "SAID" – and not what I "MEANT" ... I've updated the index to (hopefully) make it easier for a visitor to navigate ... please try the links (the "red numbered items") again – and let me know if they still won't work ... if they won't work now, it MIGHT be due to the type of browser you're using ... I'll have to work on that angle separately ... another thing that might be worth noting is that each "detail page" includes a link (near the bottom) that should take you directly to some extra reference material on Allen-Bradley's website ... hopefully this will come in handy by helping my website visitors find the "official" information on any of these specific topics ... once again, thank you for your comments ... . Edited 2 Nov 2013 by Ron Beaufort

[Guest]

to Michael Lloyd ... thank you for your comments ... in particular: which is precisely my point – and the reason that I'm trying to come up with some systematic way to identify what specific topics each of my customers really need ... the EASY projects to teach are the ones where the customer is allowed to send me a copy of his ACD project file ... it only takes me about ten minutes to browse through that and put my finger on any "problem areas" that might require special attention ... in some cases I even crank up eBay and purchase a new piece of hardware so that I can provide the hands-on exercises that this crew of students will need ... usually though, I've already got the hardware available in my lab equipment – so I just type up some extra "specific" exercises for the students to work through ... it's very common to have one or two of my students working on projects in (for example) Structured Text – while other students in the same class are simultaneously dealing with (for example) a project based on Function Block Diagrams ... the big issue is that most of the BIGGER companies that I work for have corporate security policies in place – and they're not allowed to send me their program files ... great ... so now they expect me to take potshots at a target that I'm not even allowed to see ... over the last couple of months I've been forced to tell several large potential customers that I can't accept their students ... basically: "Go somewhere else." ... from my wife's point of view that's a lot of money down the tubes ... but here's the "worst case scenario" the way that I look at it ... suppose that a customer sends me a student for (quote) ControlLogix training (unquote) ... the student does well in the class – and feels very confident in what he's learned ... but (and here's the rub) we only had time in the five-day class to work through "Ladder Diagrams" - and maybe a dose of "Structured Text" ... now the student gets back to the plant and the first troubleshooting problem that he has to tackle involves "Function Block Diagrams" – or – "Sequential Function Charts" – or "Equipment Phases" – or so on ... that's not going to look good for the student ... it's not going to look good for the boss ... and it's certainly not going to look good for me ... one reason that I'm so focused on nailing all of this down is because I've started thinking about an "exit plan" for this little one-man business of mine ... one critical part of this would be to "streamline" the ControlLogix piece of the puzzle before I try to sell the business and retire ... hopefully this "topic menu" arrangement will help ... thank you for your comments ... I sincerely appreciate your time and effort ... .

[Bill Linne 0]

Ron: I had tried clicking the little freckle, the topic name, and the number last night. Seeing your reply this morning, I've tried all those again; still nothing. First attempt today (as last night) was on my iPad. When that failed, I tried my PC, using Google Chrome; no go. Oddly, in Chrome, when I cursor over the left side of the screen, the pointer turns into the miniature magnifying glass, and all I accomplish by clicking is to change the size of the text & icons. They shift from original size to larger, next click they get smaller. etcetera. Then I tried Internet Explorer, and when I move the cursor over the left side of the screen, regardless if I'm over a 'link' or not, the cursor never changes to the little finger, and there is zero response to clicking. I dunno.

[Guest]

this is truly weird ... I'm using Internet Explorer Verion 8 – on Windows XP Pro ... all of this works FINE for me ... I'm using "picture hotspots" to provide the hyperlinks to go from the "index" page into the other "detail" pages ... each one of those "detailed" links uses a "Same Frame" (_self) setup to display the appropriate detail page ... maybe someone geekier than I am can explain all of this ... I know just enough about website design to get it working (or at least I THOUGHT that I did) ... quick question in case you have time to check ... do the regular "menu based" links into the rest of my website (the normal areas) work for you? ... specifically, can you reach my "Schedule of Classes" page, etc.? ... just a wild guess – do you have any particular "security" settings enabled on your computer? ... this is precisely the type of thing that I'm trying to clear up – before I put this new section out there for public consumption – so thank you very much for your input ... just as a quick test – here is a direct link into one of the "detail pages" ... http://www.ronbeaufort.com/CLX_Equipment_Phases.htm if you get a chance to check that one out, please let me know whether or not it works ... and then again, maybe I just need to take down the picture of Obama's "glitch girl" ... maybe that's what's jinxing the whole project ... Edited 2 Nov 2013 by Ron Beaufort

[Bill Linne 0]

The "Phases" link works fine, and all the buttons on your home page work fine. But still no joy on the new links. Glitch Girl - Sibelius? At least your site didn't cost taxpayers $600M!!

[Bob O 8]

Ron, The little red freckles don't work for me but your individual link does. I'm using Firefox and I also checked with IE 10 with no luck. Hope that Helps, Bob

[Guest]

thank you Bob – and Bill ... I dropped by Kinko's this morning and rented one of their computers for a few minutes ... Internet Explorer 9 worked OK – running under their Windows 7 Pro operating system ... specifically, the "hotspot links" with the freckles linked directly to the specified webpages exactly the way I had hoped ... but ... they also had the Firefox browser loaded – but that one would NOT work on my "hotspot links" with the freckles ... but ... I also tried Firefox on some other "hotspot links" on a couple of existing webpages on my site (and this is crazy) those particular "hotspots" worked just fine ... so who knows what's going on? ... anyway ... I've built in a workaround that I'm going to try for a while (maybe permanently) ... I've set up a list of "plain vanilla" links on the index page – so that if a visitor can't get the "freckles" to work then maybe they'll still access the material from the list that I've added to the webpage text ... I'd sincerely appreciate it if someone could try that arrangement out and let me know how it works ... thanks again for all of your help ... and incidentally, "Glitch Girl" is the little dark-haired chick that they originally had decorating the ObamaCare website ... they took her off about a week ago ... maybe she was threatening to sue? ... Edited 3 Nov 2013 by Ron Beaufort

[Bob O 8]

The links worked in both Firefox and my IE 10

[TimWilborne 108]

Hi Ron Maintaining your own website sure can be fun with all the different browsers, OS, versions, etc. With the exponential growth of The Automation Store's web traffic, the work it took to maintain the site finally reached a pace we couldn't keep up anymore and had to outsource most of the coding to an ecommerce software company. But I got home late tonight to find Amber and the kids have already gone to bed so I took the liberty of hacking your code and posting a snippet of it at theautomationstore.com to play with. See link below. http://www.theautomationstore.com/ron-beauforts-area-source-code/ Initially I couldn't get it to worth with Chrome running Windows 7 but it did work with IE9. So I played around with the attributes and was surprised to find that adding the "alt" attribute seemed to fix it with Chrome. On the above site all the hotspots seem to work fine simply by adding 'alt="mutt"' to the end of each Area Tag. Below is the source code that I ended up with. You should be able to remove the "http://www.ronbeaufort.com" from all of the links and it should work...an alt text besides mutt may help your SEO. <img src="http://www.ronbeaufort.com/CLX_Topics_Index.PNG" alt="" width="378" height="1743" usemap="#FPMap0" align="left" border="0" hspace="0" /><map name="FPMap0"> <area shape="rect" coords="5, 148, 252, 165" href="http://www.ronbeaufort.com/CLX_Ladder_Diagram.htm" alt="mutt" target="_self" /> <area shape="rect" coords="6, 165, 254, 180" href="http://www.ronbeaufort.com/CLX_Structured_Text.htm" alt="mutt" target="_self" /> <area shape="rect" coords="6, 181, 290, 198" href="http://www.ronbeaufort.com/CLX_Function_Block_Diagram.htm" alt="mutt" target="_self" /> <area shape="rect" coords="5, 197, 302, 214" href="http://www.ronbeaufort.com/CLX_Sequential_Function_Chart.htm" alt="mutt" target="_self" /> <area shape="rect" coords="4, 294, 183, 309" href="http://www.ronbeaufort.com/CLX_Equipment_Phases.htm" alt="mutt" target="_self" /> <area shape="rect" coords="5, 277, 216, 294" href="http://www.ronbeaufort.com/CLX_Source_Protection.htm" alt="mutt" target="_self" /> <area shape="rect" coords="5, 628, 264, 645" href="http://www.ronbeaufort.com/CLX_PIDE_for_Process_Control.htm" alt="mutt" target="_self" /> <area shape="rect" coords="4, 1694, 163, 1708" href="http://www.ronbeaufort.com/CLX_RSLinx_Classic.htm" alt="mutt" target="_self" /> <area shape="rect" coords="6, 612, 256, 628" href="http://www.ronbeaufort.com/CLX_PID_for_Process_Control.htm" alt="mutt" target="_self" /> <area shape="rect" coords="5, 901, 105, 916" href="http://www.ronbeaufort.com/CLX_Trend_Feature.htm" alt="mutt" target="_self" /> <area shape="rect" coords="5, 1061, 173, 1077" href="http://www.ronbeaufort.com/CLX_Ethernet_IO.htm" alt="mutt" target="_self" /> <area shape="rect" coords="5, 1380, 182, 1397" href="http://www.ronbeaufort.com/CLX_ControlNet_IO.htm" alt="mutt" target="_self" /> <area shape="rect" coords="6, 1508, 180, 1526" href="http://www.ronbeaufort.com/CLX_DeviceNet_IO.htm" alt="mutt" target="_self" /> <area shape="rect" coords="4, 1541, 357, 1557" href="http://www.ronbeaufort.com/CLX_Produced_and_Consumed_Tags.htm" alt="mutt" target="_self" /> <area shape="rect" coords="6, 262, 177, 276" href="http://www.ronbeaufort.com/CLX_Messages.htm" alt="mutt" target="_self" /> <area shape="rect" coords="4, 1268, 353, 1286" href="http://www.ronbeaufort.com/CLX_Remote_IO_Digital.htm" alt="mutt" target="_self" /> <area shape="rect" coords="4, 1315, 356, 1334" href="http://www.ronbeaufort.com/CLX_Remote_IO_Analog.htm" alt="mutt" target="_self" /> <area shape="rect" coords="5, 1237, 312, 1255" href="http://www.ronbeaufort.com/CLX_DHRIO_Module.htm" target="_self" /> </map>

[TimWilborne 108]

Also, you may be tempted to say "Internet Explorer is the number one browser so that is the only one I need to be concerned with". While they are still #1, their footing isn't nearly as firm as it used to be. Here is a look at our Google Analytics by browser. IE #1 position is only 44.81% with Chrome in a growing #2.

[Guest]

Greetings Tim ... and thanks for the help ... well, I knew that there are some differences – but my sources (years ago) told me that Internet Explorer was sort of like "plain vanilla" and that if your code would work with that – then it should work with fancier browsers too ... obviously that advice is now outdated ... thanks again for all of the tips – I'll be working on those angles as soon as time permits ... to all ... if you have any suggestions on how to improve the overall layout of this new section – or any other types of helpful criticism, I'd sincerely appreciate your comments ... thanks again ...

[TimWilborne 108]

As far as the actual content, you have done an excellent job as usual. The only "selling point" that it didn't see was a section on tags in general (not produced and consumed). It is one of the big learning curves of RsLogix 5000.

[Guest]

that one is definitely in the works – and I'll be adding more sections like that as soon as I get time ... hopefully at this point I've got a workable format – now it's a matter of doing the grunt work to fill in the details ... every time I start writing one of these sections I catch myself going into "overkill" mode ... I have to keep reminding myself that this whole project is not intended to actually TEACH the material – just to identify WHICH material needs to be taught ... I've already tried it out by taking a couple of new customers on a "phone call" guided tour – and so far it seems to get the job done ... thank you for your input ...

[Guest]

Greetings Tim ... regarding your comment: I scratched up enough time to add in the following "tag related" detail pages: 002 Controller Tags 008 Program Tags 034 Tag Arrays 050 User-Defined Data Types the hardest part of adding in this "tag stuff" was deciding how to break the material down into standalone chunks ... if you can come up with any suggestions on how to make it better, please feel free to comment ... at this point I've got it making sense to ME – but I'm not so sure that it's going to make a lot of sense to a beginner ... you know - this whole project started out as just a sort of "show and tell" session to use while talking my customers through a "tell me where it hurts" type guided tour ... now I'm starting to realize that this might also come in handy as something like "handout sheets" when I'm actually teaching the classes ... this has the potential of saving a lot of classroom time by giving the students something on paper – suitable for taking notes right in the margins ... anyway – thank you for your comments ... please feel free to keep them coming ... I hope to have this project substantially finished by the end of the year ... it's good to have someone looking over my shoulder to keep me on track ... thank you again ...