One of your first tasks when configuring alarms is to create alarm areas by naming them. FIX Dynamics provides 16 default alarm areas, named A through P; however, you can rename the default areas or add new ones by clicking the Alarm Area Database button on the SCU toolbox. Each alarm area name you enter must be unique and can be up to 30 alphanumeric characters.

In order to enter or edit an alarm area name, FIX Dynamics must be running. In addition, you can only edit the alarm area database from a SCADA server.

NOTE: Alarm area names cannot contain the characters "*", "?", or "\".

Run the "System Configuration" program.

From the Configure menu select "Alarms…".

Highlight the "Alarm Summary Service" and select "enable" from the Status box.

Press the "Advanced" button.

Press the "Alarm Area Database…" button to edit the Alarm area database. This dialog box allows you to enter new alarm area names or delete / modify current alarm areas.

Press "OK" when done. From the SCU dialog box select "Save" from the File menu.

Once you create alarm areas, you can configure your process database for alarming by entering alarm limits for analog blocks and alarm conditions for digital blocks. Alarm limits for other blocks either have custom rules or do not support alarming.

1 Double-click the block you want to modify from the database spreadsheet.

2 Click the Alarms tab from the block’s configuration dialog box.

3 Double-click a line in the Alarm Areas list box.

4 Enter an alarm area name.

5 Repeat steps 3 and 4 until you enter all the names you require.

You can also select alarm areas from the alarm area database by double-clicking a line in the Alarm Areas list box and selecting the Browse button. When Configure Alarm Areas dialog box, perform one or more of the following tasks, as desired:

To assign all available alarm areas, select the Use All Alarm Areas check box.

To add individual alarm areas, clear the Use All Alarm Areas check box, select the area in the Available Areas list box, and click the right-arrow button to add it to the Configured Areas list box.

To create a new alarm area, clear the Use All Alarm Areas check box, enter the alarm area name in the field provided, and click the Add New button. The new alarm area appears in both the Available Areas list box and the Configured Areas list box.

Fill in the values to alarm on in the "Alarms" box. Set the Priority and enable alarms by setting the "Enable Alarms" check box.

Alarm pages can be created for each sub-system within the CDF slow control system. A master alarm page can be created to monitor critical devices from any sub-system.

Starting with a blank picture insert an "Alarm Summary" object.

You can configure the Alarm Summary object by double-clicking it and displaying the object's property sheet. This property sheet lets you configure the object's filter, sort, and color properties, its appearance, and its run-time behavior. You can also save the object's current settings and reset these settings back to their preset values.

Select the "Filter" tab.

One of the most powerful features that the Alarm Summary object provides is the ability to filter alarms. By filtering alarms, you can route alarms to specific Alarm Summary objects, eliminate low priority or insignificant alarms, and focus the operator's attention to the most severe or important alarms. For example, you could filter on all high priority alarms or route alarms from a specific alarm area to one Alarm Summary object. Using OLE Automation, you can also build a display to temporarily change the Alarm Summary filters at run-time based on specific process conditions.

In order for the Alarm Summary object to filter alarms, you must create a filter condition. This condition defines the alarms you want to display. After you create the condition, the Alarm Summary object displays the alarms that match the selected criteria.

Creating Filters

For example, suppose you want to display all the alarms with an alarm priority of High. To do this,

you would:

Display the Filter tab and select the priority column.

Select the relational operator Equal to.

Select the value High.

When you do this, the Alarm Summary object adds the following condition to the bottom of the Filter tab.

Using Comparison Operators

You can also use comparison operators to determine if the alarm contains specific text in its description column. For example, the following filter displays alarms from any block with the text "Tank" in its Description field:

This includes descriptions such as:

• Oil Tank
• Tank 5
• Green Tank with Valve

The Containing Only operator, on the other hand, finds an exact match. For example, if you want to only display alarms from Pump5, you would use the following filter:

Creating Multiple Filters

You can combine multiple filter conditions together. As you create each condition, the Alarm Summary object automatically places the boolean operator AND before the new filter condition and appends the new condition to the existing one.

If you want to change the boolean operator, you can replace it with either the OR operator or the NOT operator.

Double click the "Area" from the Columns box.

Select the areas that you want this alarm summary object to monitor.

Press "OK" when done to return to the Property sheet.

Select the "Sort" tab.

Select the "Color" tab.

With the Alarm Summary object, you can create a custom alarm color scheme that provides visual cues for operators. You create the color scheme by selecting foreground and background colors. The foreground color determines the color of the alarm text and varies with the type or status of the alarm. For example, you could specify black text for High alarms and yellow text for High High alarms or you could configure all unacknowledged alarms to display in red and all acknowledged alarm in black.

The background color determines the color of the area the alarm text is displayed on and indicates the alarm priority. For example, low priority alarms could have a white background, medium priority alarms could have a gray background, and high priority alarms could have a blue background. By combining the foreground and background colors, you can create a very effective display. For example, yellow text on blue background makes locating high priority High High alarms very easy.

You also have the option to configure the font of the alarm text in the Alarm Summary object. By default, the font is 15 point Arial. By clicking the Font button for each alarm, you can select text's typeface and style. To change the font size, use the object's Properties window.

Select the "Column" Tab.

The Alarm Summary object appears as a small spreadsheet. You can change the spreadsheet's appearance by enabling or disabling its display and column properties. The display properties show or hide the object's column headings, status bar, row numbers, scroll bars, and border. Display properties also let you configure a row to flash when displaying unacknowledged alarms.

Press "Apply" when done.

Press "OK" to close the property sheet.