System Engineering and Configuration Management Tools

Invensys offers the following configuration manangement tools:

• The IACC configuration environment
• The Intelligent Design Studio template library
• FoxDraw HMI display builder

IACC

The I/A Series Configuration Component (IACC) offers a fresh new configuration environment that’s easy to use and can provide significant engineering productivity boost for both the casual user and the power user.

For the casual user, IACC offers graphical construction of both control loops and display objects using drag-n-drop methods. It combines system configuration, control configuration, and operator display configuration into a common, well-integrated environment. IACC also significantly reduces the manual configuration process by auto generating secondary connections based on the user making a primary connection between parameters of two block types during loop construction. IACC also includes a library of more than 30 of the most frequently encountered control strategies, called Intelligent Design Studio library.

For the power user, IACC offers an extensible set of tools to capture and reuse intellectual property investments including the ability to:

• utilize a variety of editors to construct control strategies including block connection drawings, structured text, sequential DCS function charts, and ladder logic diagrams
• create large, complex loops which are represented by a set of drawings with off-sheet connection references and legends
• create new control block types derived from Foxboro standards which have user-defined labels for connections and configuration parameters and utilize user defined tabbed property tables to facilitate parameter access
• create loop templates with inherited properties that can be used to bulk generate an entire project from templates, tag lists, and parameter propagation rules and to maintain the project database by simply modifying a template and propagating the change to all of its instances
• control the visibility of connections between blocks in a control loop
• customize the appearance of loop drawing elements
• create palettes of user-defined objects like new block types or saved loop fragments
• build user-defined libraries which can be exported and imported to different projects or sites

Overall, the IACC improves the quality and productivity of project execution while reducing the cost of the work process and it does this in a way that enables the engineer to focus on the application instead of the tools.

The Intelligent Design Studio (IDS) is an exciting productivity tool that simplifies control loop design and configuration. IDS consists of an easy-to-use library of control loop templates selected from the most common I/A Series user applications. The template library covers all process industries and incorporates the rich heritage of Foxboro applications Know-How.

Using this tool, chances are you’ll find a template that’s just right for the loop you’re creating. Tap a few entries into a simple spreadsheet for your particular loop characteristics and Intelligent Design Studio automatically generates everything you need. You can create up to 90 percent of all the loops required for most medium- or large-sized plants! Our project experience shows IDS is 30 to 60 percent faster than traditional methods!

FoxDraw Software

FoxDraw software, the powerful display builder and configurator for the I/A Series system, offers unique capabilities to dramatically reduce the time and expense associated with building and configuring process graphics. Displays can represent your entire plant, a particular process, or drill down to a detailed portion of the process. Whether you are running UNIX or Windows, your displays can be easily converted between the two operating systems and maintain the same look and feel. The flexibility and variety of tools available to FoxDraw software users offers countless options in building different types of displays.

What better way to save time than having the ability to build and configure one library object that can represent multiple processes? With FoxDraw software’s Aliased Object feature, you can eliminate the time-consuming task of re-building similar display objects numerous times.

Whether you build your own objects or select from the list provided by FoxDraw software, using aliases in place of tagnames or graphical attributes provides your objects with a high degree of flexibility and re-usability. Each display instance of the object can connect to different I/O points and represent different graphical attributes, appearances, range settings, security and more by simply editing the list of pre-configured aliases and attributes!

FoxDraw software’s substitution lists offer a similar function to aliases but applies to the entire display or overlay rather than a single object. The connections, labels and re-use capabilities of the single display are unlimited. In addition, with a simple edit to a text file, changes can be updated on-the-fly at run-time.

Reduce your engineering time by letting us do the work of building your display elements. Select from our library of more than 1200 pre-built display objects such as pumps, tanks, pipes, motors, valves, and ISA symbols that come standard with FoxDraw software. Each display element on the I/A Series Symbols CD has been optimized and fully labeled for ease of use and configuration. Browse the extensive library of Foxboro symbols and palettes or customize your own without the hassle of additional programs or applications!

FoxDraw standard configuration tools also support the ability to import auto-cad files and display manager displays to the FoxView application.