Custom Menu Support in Connect
Applies to V02.08.00 and later.
With Connect V2.8.0 and above you can now see and edit parameters in application custom menus. These are user-defined parameters, typically held in menus 26-28 and 30 on a drive, and are declared as part of an application created in the Machine Control Studio application.
When you work online with a drive that has custom parameters defined Connect will show these parameters just like all other drive parameters, so you can view and adjust the parameter values, customise the parameter caption, save the custom parameters to a paramter or macro file, etc.
Defining Custom Parameters
You must use the Machine Control Studio (MCS) application to create your custom menus and parameters and download the application to the drive or MCi option module. Custom parameter definitions cannot be changed using Connect.
Viewing Custom Parameters in Connect
When you go online to a drive that has custom parameters defined Connect will automatically make them available.
In order to see custom parameters when offline Connect must read the definition of the parameters into the project drive. This is done when:
- Creating a new project by scanning for drives
- Adding a drive to an existing project by scanning
- Performing an upload of all parameters
- Loading a full parameter file that has custom parameters
To be sure Connect has the correct parameters information, including the value, it is best to perform an upload of all parameters from the drive.
Parameter Captions
Custom parameters will start off with a default caption of "CustomParameter#" but you can edit the captions to be more appropriate for your application. Unfortunately any parameters names you assigned in MCS are not available for Connect to read as they are not stored on the drive.
If you have many drives with the same custom parameters defined then you can use a parameter file or macro file to copy the captions across (though be aware this will also copy the value).
Online/Offline Mismatches
If the custom parameter definitions have been changed on the drive / MCi2xx module since the Connect project for the drive was created, or a parameter upload was performed, there may be a mismatch between the offline definition Connect has of the custom parameters and what is actually on the drive. You will observe that when you go online you will see the custom menus as defined on the drive and when offline Connect will revert back to the custom menus as defined in the offline project drive, so you may notice parameters, or even whole menus, appearing and disappearing!
Connect will indicate when there is a mismatch by showing a message at the top of a parameter listings view when online.
To resolve mismatches simply upload all parameters from the drive.
Parameter / Macro Files
When you create a parameter file, custom parameter values will be included in that file and the definition of the parameters will also be included, so when you load that file into another drive in a Connect project then it will inherit the custom parameters defined in it.
With macro files, only the values of custom parameters are used. So if your macro file has a value for parameter 27.010 but the drive/project doesn't know of that parameter then it will simply be ignored.
When downloading a parameter file that has custom parameters in it to a drive then only parameters that exist in both the file and the drive will have their value updated.
MCi2xx Custom Menus 50+
Note that with MCi firmware V1.5 and below, only parameters defined in menus 26-28 can be viewed in Connect, not menus 50+. Future MCi firmware will allow you to see these menus in Connect.