Tag Import

You can use Plant SCADA's Import Variables Tags tool to automatically create variable tags that correspond to OPC UA server items.

To create variable tags based on OPC UA variables/properties:

1. Open Plant SCADA Studio.

2. In the Topology activity, select I/O Devices then Import Variable Tags.

3. In the Destination panel, select the required I/O Device. The drop-down menu includes a list of all the I/O devices currently configured in your Plant SCADA project. The device you select needs to be configured to use the OPCUA protocol, otherwise an error message will be displayed when you attempt to configure the device connection.

4. In the Source panel, set the Database Type to "OPCUA". You can ignore the value of the External Database field.

5. Click on the Browse… button to display the OPC UA Browse dialog box.

   If the OPC UA server does not allow unsecured or anonymous connections, you will need to configure the security settings via the OPC UA Configurator plugin before browsing or importing tags. You then need to select the security settings name from the drop-down list at the top of the page.

   Note: Select the "Import Item Description" check box to import the OPCUA item description.

6. Click on the expand button (+) to display all the namespaces on the OPC UA Server. Plant SCADA will connect to the OPC UA server to read the names of the namespaces and the folders under each.

   There are two options you can use to import the tags:

   1. Create tags for all items under the selected folder node or select the specific items. When using this option, you need to select the namespace or folder in the tree.

   2. For the second option, you need to click on one of the folder nodes which will display all items under this node. Select which items you want to import. The selected items will be added to the list at the bottom of the page.

7. When you have made your selections, click OK.

8. On the Import Variable Tags dialog box, click the Import button.

   If the first tag import option is used, Plant SCADA will connect to the OPC UA server to read the tag name, data type and address (Node ID). If the second import option is used, Plant SCADA will create tags for all selected items.

   Note: The number of items which can browsed for a particular folder node and the number of tags you can import is limited to 100,000.

   The value of the property Browse Name will be used as the tag name. If it has a parent folder, it will be pre-fixed with the folder name (separated by '\').

   Note: If the name of the tag is greater than 78 characters then it will be truncated to 78 characters. A warning message will be logged in the tag import log file.

9. On Tag Import Results dialog box, click Yes to display the log file.