Equipment Types
- Last UpdatedJul 18, 2023
- 2 minute read
In a Plant SCADA project, the term "equipment type" refers to a template that you can use to associate multiple instances of a particular piece equipment in your project.
For example, if you have a motor that is deployed in numerous locations across a production facility, you could create an equipment type to act as a template for the motor. This will bring together many of the configuration settings required to add each instance of the motor to your project, such as the associated variable tags, operational states, cluster associations, and so on.
To then add one of the motors to your project, you simply create a new instance of the equipment type. This offers the following benefits:
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Minimal configuration is required to deploy multiple equipment instances
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Configuration is consistent across multiple equipment instances
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Equipment instances are automatically integrated into the project's equipment hierarchy
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An equipment type maintains an association with each equipment instance that is created from it, allowing any changes to be easily applied across an entire project.
An equipment type is made up of the following:
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Items - used to represent attributes of the physical piece of equipment, which can include controls, actions, conditions, settings, and so on. Each item is made up of a set of elements, which can include variable tags, trends or alarms (see Items)
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Configuration Parameters - used to define specific values associated with the piece of equipment (see Add Configuration Parameters to an Equipment Type)
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States - used to define operational states for the associated piece of equipment that you can use for scheduling (see Equipment States)
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Linked Genie - specifies a genie that you can use to represent the piece of equipment on your graphics pages (see Link a Genie to an Equipment Type).
To create equipment types, you use the Equipment Editor (see Equipment Editor).
Alternatively, you can create your own XML template and add it to your project as an equipment type (see Import Equipment Using XML Templates).
Note: Equipment types are primarily designed to assist with the creation of new tags. If you would like to define an equipment hierarchy for existing tags, you should use the process described in the topic Define an Equipment Association for a Tag.