Description

Learn how to create UDT instances, in the same way you would configure standard Tags.

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Transcript

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[00:00] In this lesson, we'll talk about creating UDT instances. If you followed along on our prior videos, Creating a UDT Definition, you'll know that under my data types folder I have my motor UDT definitions. It has an amps and HOA tag. I would like to create an instance of this motor UDT. So instances don't go inside of the data types folder. So I'll collapse this for now. I'll select the root of my tag provider here or the tags folder. I'll hit the add tag dropdown. We'll go down to data type instance and then you'll select whichever UDT definition you'd like to create an instance of. So I'll select motor. We see that the tag editor appears, providing us a change the name of this one instance as well as specify the value on any parameters. So for the name here, I'm going to change the name from new instance to motor one. And I'll make sure to hit the enter key when I'm done. You'll notice that that changes the name under the structure tree here. Now when you're creating these instances, you'll also want to specify the value for any parameters that exist. So for the parameters property here, you can hit the little edit button on the right, and we have our motor number parameter that both amps and HOA are using under their OPC item path. So we can specify which number to place in this parameter, which is then utilized by the members in various ways potentially. So I'll double-click under value, I'll type one and enter and I will commit this change. So now, when we finish creating an instance of this, amps and HOA can start to utilize these parameters. And again, you do that when you're creating a definition. Now I did want to mention real quick, if I go up to amps here, you'll notice that there's this little circle next to a whole bunch of properties. We'll talk about this in later videos. But you can override the value on any one of those properties within this one UDT instance. But basically, you're seeing the dots because you're looking at the tag from a UDT instance, as opposed to the definition. But we'll hit okay here and that should create motor one. If I expand that, we can see that it has an amps and HOA tag here and we're also getting some values. Now I showed you to set the value on the parameters from the tag editor. But there is a parameters area here. So I could actually expand this and it does show us all the parameters that exist on this UDT as well as what their values are. Now I could actually double-click here, change the number and hit enter. Now if the parameter doesn't seem to change value right away, remember you can always go up to the tag browser and refresh the entire tag provider. But it looks like it updated down here. So, of course, I could copy this entire UDT instance. I could paste it a couple of times. And I could just change the parameters on each instance.

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