An important aspect of the MVX data model extensibility is the concept of equipment roles. The following screen casts provides an introduction to this concept and how it is applied in MVX. A transcript follows the video.
This screen cast runs through the concept of equipment roles in MVX. Items of equipment are registered in MVX using a configuration tool such as the one you are viewing now. In other screen casts, we’ve shown examples of data models that define how we represent equipment information in MVX.
Equipment roles are an extension to a data model that allow equipment to play different roles in an industrial automation system independently of their core nature. Examples of different equipment roles include:
- Documentation
- Maintenance
- Video Surveillance
- Electrical Circuits
- Communications Networks
- Steam Circuits
These roles define how an item of equipment relates to different sub system within a broader enterprise system.
Each equipment role can have its own specific properties and relationships just like the core Equipment data. Each equipment role can be applied to different items of equipment or not applied as required. A role can then be associated with a specialist display in the MVX 3D user interface. You can also add new equipment role types that are specific to your own project needs.
This ability to split up different aspects of equipment information using roles makes it a lot easier to implement User Interface systems that display all of this information consistently and with a strong organizational sense.
The screen you are seeing shows an MVX configuration program where a pipeline instrument has been selected. We’ve covered this configuration of equipment in other screen casts, but you can see that the pipeline instrument now has two additional tabs, one for documentation and one for maintenance. This implies that the equipment selected plays two roles in the system beyond being solely an item of equipment.
Lets segway into some theory just for a bit. This class diagram shows the structure of the MVX equipment role design.
Any item of equipment can have an arbitrary number of equipment roles associated with it.
Documented Equipment is one of the standard MVX roles.
Each item of documented equipment can have an arbitrary number of documents configured for it.
Each document belongs to a library of documents.
A more complex structure exists for the maintenance design. This design is based directly on ISA 95 maintenance concepts. Alternatively, the maintenance structure can be based on your own in-house maintenance system and simply linked to an MVX equipment item via a unique identifier.
If the equipment role gets all of its properties from an external system, then configuration can be limited to the definition of a unique identifier.
The documentation system provided by default in MVX allows you to configure which documents are associated with each item of equipment.
The documentation system can be based on the internal MVX document system or linked to an external Documentation Management System. The internal MVX document system is based on internet and intranet addresses.
The documents are organized into libraries so that the root address of a set of documents can be changed centrally as needed. Any document with a file name suffix recognized by your Windows setup can be referenced.
Now that we can see how a document role is configured, lets have a look at an example of how it is used within the 3D space.
If we find an item of equipment that we are interested and then click it, a dialog is displayed. From here we can list all of the documents associated with that item of equipment and double click to view the document. In this example a browser page is displayed but it could be a word document, an excel document, a pdf document or whatever.
If we turn around and click on the generator, we can access documents relating to that generator. We’re using publicly available web pages for this demonstration but they can be any document available on your intranet.
Lastly lets scoot over to a valve and click on it to see its documentation.
In summary, the MVX equipment role functionality provides a very powerful way of organizing information on equipment in a consistent way. It allows information on equipment to be grouped so that your personnel can easily understand how everything fits together in your complex industrial automation system.