JPH06266419A - Display method for operation indicator of programmable controller - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To reduce the capacity of image data by setting in advance a display area for switching the display contents into a fixed screen displayed on a screen of the operation indicator, generating an image of the instructed kind, and switching and displaying the generated image in the display area. CONSTITUTION:A CPU 1 generates an image displayed as a fixed screen on an image memory 4 by a fixed screen display program according to fixed screen display information of a system memory 2 corresponding to a designated fixed screen number. Subsequently, a plotting program corresponding to a designated plotting program number is read out, and superposed on a fixed screen image on the image memory 2. The programmable controller side instructs the operation indicator 10 side of the contents displayed in a prescribed period by a prescribed number. Subsequently, when the plotting program number is changed, only the designated plotting program is executed, therefore, an image in only a superposed area is generated by the CPU 1, and superscribed on the image memory 4.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a method of displaying an operation display unit of a programmable controller which is connected to a programmable controller to monitor a control target machine and give operation instructions.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In recent years, automation of production facilities has made remarkable progress, and in combination with the sophistication of programmable controllers, all processes such as parts machining, assembly, inspection, and work transfer between steps are programmable. It is about to be replaced by automatic control by the controller. Along with this, the role of workers at the production site has changed from operation of equipment and machinery to operation status monitoring, failure recovery, and equipment maintenance work, and the man-machine interface is required accordingly. Functions have changed. That is, the conventional operation-based functional configuration is changed to a display-based functional configuration such as a monitor and an operation guide, and the operation content is increasingly used as a parameter setting for coping with a wide variety of products. . In addition, downsizing and wire saving of control systems have become important issues today.

Therefore, an information input / output device called an operation display has been proposed. The operation display has an appearance as shown in FIG. 7, and displays a monitor screen on the touch panel display and also displays a switch (called a touch key) for instructing operation of the device and its display position. Information can be entered by pressing. The display screen can be switched by operating the keys of the key switch group or by an instruction from the connected programmable controller.

Therefore, the image data of a plurality of fixed (still) screens is stored in the memory of the operation display unit, and the image data of the instructed screen is read from the memory and displayed on the display screen.

[0005]

Recently, in particular, there is a user's need to display a part of a monitor screen, for example, a graphic showing a facility / machine according to an operating state like a moving image. In the display method by switching the screen of the entire display screen, it is necessary to prepare a plurality of display screens including a common part, and the capacity of the image data storage memory becomes enormous. Therefore, displaying moving images has been an obstacle to downsizing of the apparatus.

Therefore, in view of the above points, an object of the present invention is to display the operation of a programmable controller capable of dynamically displaying the operating states of machines and equipment without increasing the capacity of image data. It is to provide a display method of the container.

[0007]

In order to achieve such an object, the present invention sets a display area for switching display contents in a fixed screen displayed on a display screen of an operation display device in advance, Displaying a type of an image to be displayed in the display area repeatedly from the programmable controller to the operation display unit, creating an image of the type instructed on the operation display unit, and switching and displaying the created image in the display area. Is characterized by.

According to the present invention, a drawing program for creating an image by a CPU is stored in advance in a memory for each type of image, and a drawing program corresponding to the type of image instructed by the programmable controller is created. It is characterized in that an image used for display is created by being executed by the CPU.

Further, according to the present invention, an image corresponding to the type of the image is stored in advance in a memory in the operation display, and the image corresponding to the type instructed by the programmable controller is read from the memory. The feature is that an image used for display is created by outputting.

[0010]

In the present invention, attention is paid to the fact that the size of the image displayed as a moving image on the operation display is constant, and a specific position on the display screen is used as the switching display area. Therefore, since it is not necessary to use the image of the entire display screen as the image used for switching display, the image capacity is reduced compared to the conventional case.

[0011]

Embodiments of the present invention will now be described in detail with reference to the drawings.

<First Embodiment> FIG. 1 shows a main circuit configuration of a first embodiment of the present invention. In FIG. 1, the following circuits are connected to the common bus.

Central processing unit (CPU) 1: control processing for communication with a programmable controller, processing for creating an image to be displayed on the touch panel display 10, information input from the touch panel display 10 to the programmable controller. Performs processing for converting to instructed information and system-related control processing.

System memory 2: A program executed by the CPU 1 and various data used for executing the program are stored in advance. The stored information related to the present invention is as follows.

(A) Fixed screen display program-programmable controller or touch panel display 10
Is a program for displaying a static (fixed) screen instructed by the program, which converts character / symbol codes into an image and writes the image in the image memory in correspondence with the display position.

(B) Drawing program-a program for creating various graphic images forming a graphic showing mechanical equipment. The drawing program is composed of a plurality of drawing commands that instruct drawing of straight lines, circles, and the like. First to nth drawing programs for creating an image of each drawing are prepared for each kind of drawing. The drawing program itself is well known, and detailed description thereof will be omitted.

(C) Fixed screen display information-characters (hereinafter, including symbols) displayed on the fixed display screen used for switching display
It is composed of code information and information indicating the position thereof, and is stored in the system memory 2 in a grouped manner for each type of content of the fixed screen.

(D) Drawing-related information-Data used in the drawing program and stored in the system memory 2 for each type of drawing program.

(E) Other information-working information of the CPU Information used for system processing of the other CPU is stored in the system memory 2.

Input / output (I / O) interface 3: Information is exchanged between the programmable controller and the CPU 1. As information related to the present invention, a fixed screen number and a drawing program number are received from the programmable controller.

Image memory 4: Corresponding to a display pixel on the display screen of the touch panel type display device 10, it stores bit information indicating whether or not the display pixel is turned on. When color display is performed, color information is also stored, but for convenience of explanation, the case of monochrome display will be described in this embodiment.

I / O6: Transfers the position information input from the touch panel type display 10 to the CPU 1.

Next, the touch panel type display 10 will be described. Since a well-known touch panel type display 10 can be used, only the points related to the present invention will be described.

The touch panel type display 10 has a controller 10A and a touch panel 10B. The controller 10A reads out image data from the image memory 4 at a constant cycle (vertical synchronization) and supplies it to the touch panel 10B as an image signal. The touch panel 10B illuminates the display pixels based on the input image data to visually display the image. Further, a transparent pressure sensitive sensor is provided on the display screen of the touch panel 10B, detects the contact of the user's finger, and outputs the contact position in the form of an electric signal. This position information is identified by the CPU 1 and converted into input information from the touch switch.

The display screen of the touch panel 10B described above is
As shown in FIG. 2, it is normally used as a fixed screen area A, but when changing a part of the screen such as a moving image,
Figure overlapping area B for displaying the image of change
Is set.

Next, the display operation according to the present invention will be described with reference to the flowchart of FIG. FIG. 3 shows the contents of the display system program stored in the system memory 2. The program of FIG. 3 is read and executed by the CPU 1 at regular intervals.

That is, the CPU 1 reads the data sent from the programmable controller and held in the I / O 3 (S10).

First, the CPU 1 creates an image to be displayed as a fixed screen on the image memory 4 by the fixed screen display program based on the fixed screen display information of the system memory 2 corresponding to the designated fixed screen number (S11).
→ S12). Next, the drawing program corresponding to the specified drawing program number is read out, and an image as shown in the figure overlapping area B of FIG.
Overlay with fixed screen image above (S1 as an example
3 → procedure of S15).

On the programmable controller side, the contents to be displayed in a fixed cycle are instructed to the operation display side by the fixed screen number and the drawing program number.

If the drawing program number is changed without changing the fixed screen number, only the specified drawing program is executed in the procedure of FIG. 3 (S10 → S1 of FIG. 3).
0A → S13), an image of only the figure overlapping area B of FIG. 2 is created by the CPU 1, and is overwritten on the image of the previous figure on the image memory 4. As a result, the figure of only the figure overlapping area B of FIG. 2 is switched to the new figure and displayed. By sequentially performing such processing, the image of the graphic overlapping area B can be displayed in a moving image form.

<Second Embodiment> In the first embodiment, an example of instructing a diagram to be switched and displayed from the programmable controller in the form of a program number is explained, but a second embodiment in which a graphic number is instructed will be described below.

In the second embodiment, the information stored in the system memory 2 of FIG. 1 is partially different. That is, as shown in FIG. 4, a graphic image is stored for each type of graphic such as a circle or a quadrangle instead of the drawing program.

Also, instead of the program number, the first and second
The programmable controller designates the figure numbers to be displayed in the figure overlapping areas AA and BB (see FIG. 5).

In the second embodiment, the fixed screen display procedure is the first.
Similar to the embodiment, FIG. 6 shows a procedure for displaying a graphic to be switched and displayed on the fixed screen.

In FIG. 6, the CPU 1 identifies the graphic to be displayed in the first graphic overlapping area AA from S50 to S60.
→ Go to S70. When the designated figure number is 1, it is detected in S50 that the displayed figure is the first figure, and the first figure image (see FIG. 4) in the system memory 2 is overlapped with the first figure in the image memory 2. It is stored by the CPU 1 in the location corresponding to the alignment area (S55). Similarly, the graphic to be displayed in the corresponding position of the second graphic overlapping area is identified from the graphic number and is stored in the corresponding position of the image memory 2 by the CPU 1.

Since the above-described processing procedure is repeated at regular intervals, the graphic display on the display screen is also switched when the graphic number designated by the programmable controller is switched.

In addition to this embodiment, the following example can be carried out.

1) In the second embodiment, the graphic displayed in the graphic overlapping area is stored in the form of an image, but a drawing command of a single graphic and its display-related information may be stored instead of the image. .

2) The first embodiment and the second embodiment can be used together.

For example, a drawing in which a plurality of figures are combined is displayed using a drawing program, and a single figure or the like is displayed using a graphic image prepared in advance. It is also possible to switch and display a part of the drawing drawn using the drawing program with a graphic image prepared in advance.

3) In the first and second embodiments, a display mode is possible in which the image displayed in the figure overlapping area is left as the image displayed on the previous fixed screen even if the type of the fixed screen is switched. In this case, a new type of fixed screen to be displayed from the programmable controller and a figure type (or figure drawing program) to be left are instructed.

4) In the first and second embodiments, the position of the graphic overlapping area is fixed, but it can be moved to another position. In this case, send the information indicating the new position from the programmable controller to the operation display,
The position at which the created graphic image is stored in the image memory 4 is determined based on the transmission position information.

5) In addition, when the color of the line of the figure and the drawing logic are instructed from the programmable controller as attribute information, various information can be expressed even with the figure of the same shape.

[0044]

As described above, according to the present invention, a part of the fixed screen is set as a switching display area such as a moving picture display area. The image data stored in the operation display is reduced. On the contrary, the display information of the switching display area can be commonly displayed on different fixed screens.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a circuit configuration of a first embodiment.

FIG. 2 is an explanatory diagram showing display contents of the first embodiment.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart showing an execution procedure of a CPU 1 of FIG.

FIG. 4 is an explanatory diagram showing storage information of a system memory 2 in the second embodiment.

FIG. 5 is an explanatory diagram showing display contents of the second embodiment.

FIG. 6 is a flowchart showing an execution procedure of the CPU 1 in the second embodiment.

FIG. 7 is a perspective view showing an appearance of an operation display device.

[Explanation of symbols]

 1 CPU 2 System memory 3,5 I / O 4 Image memory 10 Operation display

Claims (3)

[Claims] 1. A display area for switching display contents is preset in a fixed screen displayed on the display screen of the operation display unit, and the type of image to be displayed in the display area is set from the programmable controller to the operation display unit. A method of displaying an operation indicator of a programmable controller, characterized in that an instruction of an image of the indicated type is made repeatedly on the operation indicator, and the created image is switched and displayed in the display area. 2. A drawing program for creating an image by a CPU is stored in advance in a memory for each image type, and the drawing program corresponding to the image type instructed by the programmable controller is stored in the CP.
The method for displaying an operation indicator of a programmable controller according to claim 1, wherein an image used for display is created by executing the operation in U. 3. An image corresponding to the type of the image is stored in advance in a memory in the operation display unit, and an image corresponding to the type indicated by the programmable controller is read from the memory, 2. An image used for display is created.
The display method of the operation indicator of the programmable controller described in.