Control and View Your Plant from One Place with FactoryTalk View

Looking for the best way to control and view your plant operations from one centralized location?  Well then, you will love deploying FactoryTalk View Site Edition.

Not familiar with FactoryTalk View Site Edition (SE)?  You’re not alone. More commonly known is FactoryTalk View Machine Edition, or, the ME solution, it offers on machine control and viewing of an operation, typically on a device like a PanelView Plus. Whether it’s starting or stopping your system, navigating to setpoints, or viewing some data, ME is a good single machine solution. But what about multi-machine, multi-line? That’s where FTView Site Edition comes in.

What is FactoryTalk View Site Edition?

FactoryTalk View Site Edition, or View SE for short, offers all features of ME, plus much, much, more.  Data logging then connecting to MS SQL, Online Screen Edits without shutting down the runtime, and one computer to do all of the display edits are just some of the features.

Some Notes

As with any decision towards a product for an HMI usage, let me share a few things to keep in mind with this FactoryTalk View SE technology.

1. It runs on any computer, however as expected, there is minimum set of requirements.
2. As with any computer, power protection is strongly recommended for both the server and any clients with a UPS being the best option.
3. The software then the computer should be shutdown prior to removing the power.
4. View SE can run along with other software in most cases in the same Windows instance.

Key Details

Some of the features of this technology you should know about include:

1. FactoryTalk View SE comes in two styles, Local Station, Server Edition.
2. Both styles of SE are sold in Display count, not in tag count saving a lot of cost in most installations.
3. Local Station is like Machine Edition on Steroids.
4. SE performs On-line Edits for any of the screens similar to a Logix PLC.  You just use the Studio editor to make the change to an existing screen or add a new display, then hit save.  The SE runtime client will see the change without shutting down the client saving countless hours during develop or on-going maintenance after deployment.
5. The SE Server version supports up to 50 Clients giving you one/single place to program your entire building wide set of displays networked together.
6. Up to 10 HMI Site Edition servers can link together as a redundant system offering high availability.
7. SE Clients that connect to the server work great on Allen Bradley Touch Screen computers.
8. SE connects to any Microsoft SQL database using embedded security at no extra cost.
9. The Site Edition Enterprise level View Studio allows many objects and ME projects to import to the SE project.
10. SE is a perfect upgrade from RSView32 projects.
    Redundant Servers Easily Ensure Availability
11. SE like RSView32, supports many different VBA operations so again, RSView32 project can be converted as well as many Non-Allen Bradley/Rockwell Automation HMI projects.
12. SE’s Live Data nodes can be setup as redundant connections to the HMI Servers offering even more high availability. 
13. Through various methods, View SE can connect to any OPC, UA and DA servers making partial migration easier.

References/Additional Information:  

• FactoryTalk View Site Edition Product Profile
• FactoryTalk View Site Edition User’s Guide
• Program all Networked HMI Screen from 1 Place – Webinar by Rumsey
• Allen Bradley 6300 Panel Mount Touch Screen Computers for SE Clients
• RSView32 to FT View SE Webinar Link
• RSView32 to FT View SE Migration Guide
• Visualization Solutions Selection Guide
• First look at Edge Server Computers from Stratus