Back on August 20th I blogged here about if it was possible to save a FactoryTalk ViewStudio Machine Edition version 7.0 project as a previous version. I found that while you could open a v7 project in v6.1 by saving the project as a v6.1 MER, you could not open any older MER’s in older versions of ViewStudio.
So in today’s blog we’ll investigate whether we can save a FactoryTalk ViewStudio Machine Edition version 6.0 project as a previous version.
Creating and saving a FactoryTalk ViewStudio 6.0 Project
The first step is to create a simple v6.0 ViewStudio ME project. For this test I created a single screen with numeric displays, as well as an RSLinx Enterprise shortcut to a PLC as shown below:
Next, I created three runtimes for my test as seen below:
For the last step in ViewStudio 6.0, I created a v6.0 APA file to test as well (not shown)
Attempting to open the v6 project in v5.1
With all my file creation duties in ViewStudio 6.0 complete, I shut down that VMware image and started my ViewStudio 5.1 image.
Once running, I first attempted to restore the v6.0 APA file on the 5.1 system and was greeted with the following message:
I wasn’t surprised this didn’t work, but wanted to be thorough so I gave it a shot.
Next, I attempted to restore the v5.1 mer I had saved in v6 above. To do this, I opened the FactoryTalk ViewStudio Application Manger and used the following steps:
After successfully restoring the 6.0 project using the 5.1 mer, I wanted to be sure everything worked so I opened the project in ViewStudio:
As you can see below, everything looks in order:
Successful with 5.1, I now moved on to ViewStudio 5.0.
Attempting to open the v6 project in v5.0
To start, I attempted to restore the v50 MER file using the same procedure I used above with version 5.1, but the end result is shown below:
The only other thing I could think of doing was to import the v50 project. This is done using a procedure I first learned from Rockwell Tech Note, 8913 – Recovering a Project from the MER File which was previously a public document but now requires a tech connect.
After running the .MER on my machine using ME Station, I copied the contents of the ~mer00 folder from the temporary directory as described in Tech Note 8913. But when I attempted to import the .MED file into ViewStudio 5.0 I received the following error message:
Conclusion:
In conclusion, while you can restore a version 6.0 project in ViewStudio 5.1 by saving the 6.0 project as a 5.1 MER, this is unfortunately not the case with older versions like v5.0.
I hope you find the above information helpful, and as always if you would like to comment please feel free to click on the “post a comment or question” link below.
Until next time, Peace ✌️
Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator
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I do restore the .apa file to .med , and i make a runtime in FTV V7. The problem is, the runtime aplication can not run into the PV+ that have firmware version 4.00.12 (cpr7). My question is, how can i run that app runtime in PV+ with firmware v4.00.12? And i dont want to upgrade the PV+ Firmware. Please for the help, Thank you.
Amru
Good afternoon Amru,
When you create the Runtime in FTV 7, be sure to select version 4 (it defaults to v7)
Hope this helps,
Shawn Tierney
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