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Where to find Guide to Intellution Fix 7.0 ?

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Hi I'm maintaining a an Intellution Fix 7.0 installation for customer. This Fix connects to OMRON PLC. I'm more familiar with other HMI software, but not Fix. I know that Fix 7.0 is discontinued and replaced by iFix. Any one can tell me where to find Guide/Tutorial to Intellution Fix 7.0 ? Many thanks.

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Google tells all documents for Fix 7.0 are included on the installation disk. Maybe you can get some information from the GE support website, but you must be registered.

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Hi I already waded through their Support site, but all I found is just upgrade guide or bug knowledge base. Thanks.

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The only place to get the information you desire is from the installation CD, I last bought a copy about 2 years ago, don't know if they still sell it. It was obsolete then, but you could still buy it. If you contact a local dist. they may let you have a copy. If you have specific question, post them here and I may be able to help. I am currently supporting several Fix32 installations. In fact I prefer it to the newer iFix. If they would port it to WinXP and add OPC support, I would use it for new installations. iFix has much better graphics, but IMHO Fix32 is much more robust, and easier to maintain. Ken

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Hi Thanks for the help. I have no idea about Fix32, and dont want to invest much time into it because it's obsolete and my laptop is WinXp, not Win32 or Win2000. But now I'm requested to do some work on an existing Fix32, e.g translating pages currenly in Japanese into English, fixing connection problems,.. I already have Fix CD and have installed it into my laptop. Some questions: 1- What files make up an HMI project? I need to find existing HMI project files to do the work, or at least, I have to open the master files in Designer, then open other files in that window 2- How to read the I/O count that a dongle supports ? 3- FIX32 can only be installed on WinNT ? Can it be run on Win2000, WInXP or Win98, ? 4- How are the user project files located ? They are grouped into a separate folder that user can set ? What file extension ? I found a folder called Sample on Setup CD that has .cmp files inside. Is .cmp project files ? 5- How to add driver for OMRON PLC Hostlink ? Thanks for your help.

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Fix32 ver 7.0 was ported from NT to Win2000, I am currently running it on three NT 4.0 SP6 machines, and one running Win2000. I know of others that are running it on WinXP, but that was never officially blessed, and I don't know if there are special tweaks to make it work. As for Win98, I never tried it, but it should work fine. Win98 wasn't stable enough for the work place. If the defaults were used at installation, there should be a "C:\FIX32" directory on the hard drive, this directory will contain everything needed. That's one of the things I like about Fix32, everything is located in one place, easy to backup, just copy the one directory. You can copy that directory from the existing machine and place it on a second machine, and it will work. Launch Draw.exe, open up one of the existing pictures, click on one of the dynamics and it will open a popup, from there you can determine what point in the database it is tied to. From within Draw you can also launch the database builder and the driver configuration. Look at the menu bars across the top. The only way I know to check the number of tags supported is to call the Intellution dealer, if you give them the number off the dongle, they can tell you who bought it, when, and what kind of license it is. If you only have a run time license, you can remove the dongle before starting the machine, then start it up, start up fix. You will get a notice saying no license present, select DEMO mode, you can now use the development environment for two hours. If security has been implemented you will need the user name and password of someone with admin rights. If you can't find that out PM me, there is a built in account with admin rights, that many people never alter, and this may be true with this system as well. Fix32 does not support OPC, (one of it's draw backs) you will have to obtain the OMRON driver from either Intellution or a third party. The drivers are installed as part of the installation. If you have to add additional drivers, you have to re-run the installation disk, at one point it will prompt you for additional drivers. If you read the electronic manuals that come with the install disk, they are pretty good, they can answer almost all the questions you posted here. I know that no one likes reading the manual, but sometimes you just have to. I believe that is the case here. Ken

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Thanks Ken for the answer, I still have some questions : 1- Project files: According to your answer, all project files are in C:\Fix32 (if that's the installation folder). So, if you want to copy files of just a project, where to find it because C:\Fix32 also contains main executables and other things not needed for the project 2- Launching project: Fix32 doenst have a master project file like in other HMI or programming package ? So you have to open one of the project file or screen file (what extension?) , and trace from there? 3- Tags If we cant determine ourselves the I/O count the dongle can support, we must do some manual work of reading the serial part number? It leads me to a speculation that, dongle doenst contain built-in I/O count, instead, Fix sales office will associate DOngle serial with a license number to determine the I/O count 4- Driver I've obtained an additional driver from Intellution and added it. Can you guide me to configure it ? 5- Manual Actually, what set me back is Intellution manual. I found many terms they used were quite difficult to understand, compared to other HMI soft like Cimplicity, Citect, WinCC,.. Many thanks for the help.

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This is the first Thanksgiving Holiday week end I’ve had off in years, so I’m posting this from home. I don’t have a copy of Fix on hand, but I have it on my work laptop, and I will have to take a look to refresh my memory. I don’t work with it every day, and it sometimes takes me a couple of minutes to get back up to speed. So… The following information if from memory and may not be exactly correct. The Fix32 directory has sub-directories for each type of information. The displays end with a *.pic extension. There is an executable under called either sbu or sdu, can’t remember off hand. If you run this, it will show the path’s to all the required files. I still think the best thing to do is copy the entire Fix32 directory from the current machine, onto your laptop. Then launch the Fix32 start up. Once that is running in most cases it will automatically launch the Fix View application, from within View, if you right click anywhere on the display, you will have the option to launce DRAW, click on that. This will launch draw with the current display already open. From Draw you can access everything else except the historian. If you’re still having problems next week, post back, and I’ll try to give you a hand. I can’t give you any help with the OMRON driver, I’ve only used TI and AB with Fix32. It can’t be that difficult though. What kind of driver is it? Ethernet, serial, something else? Ken

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Thanks Ken for spending your valuable holiday time on the matter. I also did things similar to your guide, but some time back and now I dont remember exactly now. I digged around Fix32 folder to find the project files I'm interested in. After all, I copied every thing in that folder to my laptop to study it, although I found it very strange & redundant to do so. If I'm not wrong, U must specify some thing as the startup, say a startup project, because it's common to have numerous projects already on the machine. So how to put the project in question to the startup list? The driver I got is serial HostLink. i also find it quite strange when Fix cant tell user how many I/O points they have purchased and available. Thank you.

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PLCer The startup list for Fix32 is set up in the system configuration utility (SCU.EXE). Each "Project" must be set up as a seperate Fix Node. The files are normally all stored in the same Fix directories but you will usually only have to move the database file (PDF), driver configurations and picture files (ODF) from your development machine to your runtime machines. (Plus tag group files if you use them) Fix32 up to V6 used to come with an applet called KEYDIAG.exe which allowed you to view information on your key. I have checked the V7 CD and this does not seem to be present but it still seems to work on a V7 installation. Andybr KEYDIAG.EXE

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Hi Andybr Yes, I was instructed by an Intellution rep to run KeyDiag to view dongle info, but I cant find it and the rep also forgets it. Hmm, accoording to all of your instructions, all files of all projects in Fix are mixed up in a folder or 2, and the files we need to copy are not known. If I'm not wrong, Fix also has a utility to backup project files for deployment to other machines, right? Many thanks.

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If you try the steps listed earlier in this thread, you will find out what you need, yet you keep trying tu use methods from other SCADA packages, that just won't work with Fix32. Fix32 is an old package, first developed for DOS, then modified over the years to work with Windows 3.11, 95, NT, Win2k. It doesn't have the nice to haves of the newer packages. You don't seem willing to follow advice or put forth any real effort, so I give up. Maybe this task is beyond your level of expertise. If so, I'm sure your Intellution dealer can recommend someone to help you out. I'm sorry I couldn't be of more assistance, but I just don't have the time or patience, it's always been one of my shortcomings. Ken

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Did you have to do anything "special" to get it to work on XP? I'm doing a project 1st qtr of 2006, and planned on using Fix32 on a Win2000 machine, but XP might be a better option. I called the Intellution dealer yesterday and you can still purchase Fix32, but it's not listed on the Intellution or dealers website. I might just install it on a test machine, and see what happens. thanks, Ken

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Nothing special. Had to read the manual a couple of times.( which I should have done first).

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I myself prefer ifix entirely, but i'm still curious to what fix32 costs comparatively.

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Well I called about that today, Fix32 is around 15-20% higher, they are using price to get people to migrate to iFix. The problem has always been that there wasn't an easy migration path. However, according to the local guy, there is now something called Fix for Desktop, that allows you to change to the iFix engine, and still use all you old Fix32 scripts, graphics etc.... Complete coversion and back up in running in 1/2 a day or less. Then you can slowly (as you have time) migrate the graphics and so forth, cost about $300.00 per node as an option. I'll be getting some info on it and will post my findings. Ken

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"Half a day or less" hmmm, and I have a bridge to sell you.

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hi Ken U must accept that the experience of users is varied, and thus they are here to exchange knowledge. And it's now uneasy to find good support for this old software. Even when I asked Intellution rep, the answer is still far from satisfactory. Such as Intellution rep forgot about KEYDIAG.exe, but an advice from Andybr is valuable. Even if U gave valuable advice (in your knowledge), users here still have to filter out the good things from the bad. Anyway, I'll try the advices from all of you. Thanks.

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Yesterday I had a closer look at customer's site. Their Fix is in Japanese (menus, messages,..), but the HMI pages are in English. Now they want to install Fix in English so they can understand the menus, messages or modify/fix some errors. Currently, the database file is lost or cannot be found. So basically what I will do is install Fix-English version, then port the current pages and database into the new version. Can anyone tell me where I can find database file. Many thanks.

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PLCer The database file should be in the Fix PDB directory and will have the extension .PDB. There will probably be more than one database file including one called Empty.PDB so you need to know which file your project is using. This can be found by opening the system configuration application (SCU). The active database is shown on the main window under the Node name. Andybr

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