I recently sat down with Keith Hogan, product manager for View Designer and PanelView 5000 HMIs, to learn more about his products and new features planned for the next release of the software.

In today’s article I’ll share the highlights of what I learned, and if you’d like to watch (or listen) to my complete podcast with Keith you’ll find it here.

Image courtesy of Rockwell Automation’s appearance on The Automation Podcast Ep. 74

Let’s start with the new features common to both the 5310 and 5510 HMIs.

The first on the list is the ability to choose where on the screen the popup keypad is displayed by choose one of nine choices.

Image courtesy of Rockwell Automation’s appearance on The Automation Podcast Ep. 74

This is very helpful when you still need to see the information below the keypad, and also helps when you have multiple numeric inputs spread across your display.

Next is the ability to clear a specific data log. Unlike like previous PanelView products, the PV5000 supports up to three datalogs running at a time, for a total of 1.296 billion data points across all log files.

Third on my list is support for the new Automatic Diagnostics feature which was added into Logix Designer in version 33.

This allows PanelView 5310 and 5510 HMIs to automatically show control system faults without any configuration on the HMI side.

Image courtesy of Rockwell Automation’s appearance on The Automation Podcast Ep. 74

These new faults appear on a new system banned indicator (Heart shape) which upon pressing the user will be brought to a pre-defined Automation Diagnostics Screen.

Also new are the Automatic Diagnostics Summary and History Elements added to support this new feature.

View Designer itself also has been improved in v8.

Saving projects is up to two times faster, projects load up to four times faster, and Find/Replace operations are up to 32 times faster.

Runtimea have also seen speed increases, with screen switching speed now occurring up to twice as fast, and downloads completing up to 25 time faster.

In additional to those improvements, the PanelView 5510 is also getting some additional enhancements.

One is the increase support for a total of 500 Screens and Popups (The 5310’s limit stays at 100.)

But probably the biggest new feature for the 5510 in v8 is the new Web Browser support.

The new HTML5 browser supports Web Pages, MP4 Videos, and even IP Cameras using H.264 or MJPEG.

Image courtesy of Rockwell Automation’s appearance on The Automation Podcast Ep. 74

It’s configurable in size, look and feel, including position and menu bar settings.

The browser supports content on the internet or a private intranet, as well as on the USB and SD locations. It also supports the built-in web pages found in many Rockwell products.

And those are the highlights of what’s planned for version 8 of View Designer.

As with any early look at a future release of software, there’s always a chance the software’s release will be postponed, or that the features mentioned will be delayed or changed.

If you’d like to know more about the PanelView 5000 line and View Designer, check out all our previous coverage here.

Until next time, Peace ✌️ 

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

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Shawn Tierney

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