Introduction, Intouch overview – Echelon LNS DDE Server User Manual
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Introduction
The InTouch example provides an overview of how to use the InTouch software
with the LNS DDE Server. See Using the InTouch Example in Chapter 2 for a
description of the requirements for using the example, and for installation
instructions.
The following section provides a brief description of InTouch. You can skip this
section if you are an experienced InTouch user.
Intouch Overview
Wonderware’s InTouch 7.0 is a Windows PC based supervisory HMI development
tool included with Wonderware’s Factory Suite 2000. InTouch enables rapid
development of graphical monitoring and control applications that interact with
a versatile offering of DDE based I/O servers. InTouch uses three integrated
applications that perform the following functions.
• InTouch Application Manager - Is used to create, manage, and select HMI
application projects.
• InTouch WindowMaker - Is the devleopment environment used to create
HMI applications.
• InTouch WindowViewer - Is the runtime environment for applications
created in WindowMaker.
Normally, the HMI application developer runs the InTouch Application
Manager to setup the framework for the application projects, and then spends
their time in the WindowMaker and WindowViewer applications as the custom
HMI is developed in iterative steps.
In InTouch, the tag dictionary is central to the operation of the application. The
tag dictionary is a high performance database that is used to connect application
data to graphic objects using animation links. The graphic objects provide the
user’s view to a system. There are four basic tag data types:
Discrete
Used to represent 2-state conditions of either 0 (False, Off) or 1 (True, On).
Integer
A 32-bit signed integer value between -2,147,483,648 and 2,147,483,647.
Real
A floating (decimal) point value between -3.4e38 and 3.4e38. All floating point
calculations are performed with 64-bit resolution, but the result is stored as a 32-
bit value.
Message
A text string that can be up to 131 characters
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WonderWare InTouch Example