Symbolic Tag Editor

The Symbolic Tag Editor is used to add, select, delete and edit symbolic tags for cells containing data to:

• Transmit data to the In-Sight OPC UA Server. For more information, see OPC UA.
• Transmit data to the In-Sight OPC Classic Server. For more information, see the In-Sight^® OPC Classic Server Help file.
• Generate audit messages to an audit message server.
• Create an EasyView, which allows you to customize how data is displayed on a Cognex VisionView device and determine if the data is editable by the operator. For more information, see the VisionView^® Help file.

A cell with a symbolic tag has a color-coded triangular indicator in the lower-right corner. When the mouse is placed over a cell with a tag, the name of the tag appears:

Display the Symbolic Tag Editor

1. Select a cell in the spreadsheet that contains information that you want to transmit, or a cell that already contains a symbolic tag.

2. Right-click the cell and select Insert Symbolic Tag from the shortcut menu. If the cell already contains a symbolic tag, the shortcut menu option will be Edit Symbolic Tag.

   

   Note: When a job is created in EasyBuilder, EasyBuilder Tags are automatically inserted into the spreadsheet to reference EasyBuilder overall job results. All EasyBuilder Tags can be selected for transmission over the OPC channel, but some cannot be used to create an EasyView.

Symbolic Tag Editor Dialog Controls

• Add: Automatically inserts the AcquireImage cell (A0). Subsequently, each time the Add button is clicked, it automatically inserts the first available cell in the spreadsheet that contains transmittable data, moving sequentially through the spreadsheet, by column and then row.

• Select Cell: Initiates cell selection mode, to select the cell that will be assigned the symbolic tag.

• Delete: Permanently removes the selected symbolic tag.

  CAUTION:  Do not delete EasyBuilder created symbolic tags. Doing so may break dependencies and the EasyBuilder job may not function properly.
  Note:

  Symbolic tags can also be removed using the Edit menu:

  1. Click the cell that contains the symbolic tag.
  2. On the Edit menu, click Symbolic Tag from the Clear submenu. This will remove the tag from the cell.

• Tag Name: Specifies a name for the symbolic tag. When changing the name of a symbolic tag, be sure to follow the naming conventions outlined in the Symbolic Tag Requirements section below.

• Use OPC: When checked, the symbolic tag is transmitted via the OPC channel.

  Note:

  • For OPC UA, only Checkbox, EditFloat, EditInt, EditString and ListBox spreadsheet cells are writable. If the target cell does not contain one of these functions, it will be read-only to the In-Sight OPC UA Server and to third-party OPC UA clients. If the target cell does contain one of these functions and you are receiving an error, verify that the value you are attempting to write does not exceed any limits of the function, such as minimum value, maximum value or string length.
  • For the OPC Classic Server, only EditFloat, EditInt and EditString cells are writable via OPC. If the target cell does not contain one of these functions, it will be read-only to the In-Sight OPC Classic Server and to third-party OPC Classic clients. If the target cell does contain one of these functions and you are receiving an error, verify that the value you are attempting to write does not exceed any limits of the function, such as minimum value, maximum value or string length.
• Audit Message: When checked, any changes made to the cell's contents (e.g., changes made to the cell's formula or interactive control value) automatically generates and sends an audit message via TCP/IP, which can be imported into an audit message server in a compliance software system. Use the Audit Message Settings dialog to configure audit message settings for the active vision system and to specify the IP address and TCP/IP port of the audit message server.
• In EasyView: When checked, the symbolic tag is added to the EasyView. After enabling the In EasyView checkbox, use the EasyView Settings dialog to customize how the data is displayed on VisionView.

Symbolic Tag Requirements

• The spreadsheet cell may have only one Tag associated with it.
• Tag names:
  • Cannot start with a number.
  • Can only use the following characters: A-Z, a-z, 0-9 and the underscore "_" character. No spaces or non-English language characters may be used.
  • Can contain a minimum of 1 character and a maximum of 127 characters.
  • Cannot contain spaces.
  • Cannot be cell names or have the form of cell names (e.g., B2 or B22222).
  • Must be unique. Duplicate tag names are not allowed. There cannot be a duplicate Tag Name within the same job, regardless of case. For instance, you cannot have one tag as "test" and the other as "Test".

If transmitting tags to an In-Sight OPC Server, the following requirements must also be met:

• OPC Strings, which are the data values that are transferred, may contain any 8-bit or 2-byte character.
• OPC Tags cannot be any of the following pre-defined tag names used by either the OPC UA Server or OPC Classic Server:
  • AcquisitionCount
  • DiscreteOnline
  • GuiOnline
  • JobName
  • LiveMode
  • NativeOnline
  • Online
  • SaveJobAs
  • TriggerEvent
• OPC Tags within In-Sight Explorer and In-Sight OPC Classic Server are case-sensitive. If you create an OPC Tag in In-Sight Explorer, the corresponding OPC Tag in In-Sight OPC Classic Server must use the exact same upper and lower case characters. When the two names do not match exactly, an error will result.