Scalability is the power to resize your system — up or down — without having to modify the existing system hardware or software. Citect’s innovative scalable architecture allows your system’s architecture to grow with your requirements, while preserving your initial investment. Easily add an operator interface by using the computer set-up wizard to add an additional network and establish a control client on a new computer. The new computer can share the same configuration, and will receive I/O from the first Citect computer.

Citect’s graphics are based on a simple set of objects, namely rectangles, ellipses, bitmaps, straight lines, freelines, polylines, text, symbols and pipes. Associated with these objects is a common set of object properties. These properties allow an object’s behaviour to be directly linked to your plant variables. The movement, rotation, size, colour, fill and visibility of any object can be used to realistically mimic plant floor conditions. Commands and touch properties can be assigned so that the object can accept a variety of operator inputs.

An efficient alarm system helps you to quickly isolate and identify faults, reducing the amount of downtime. The Citect alarm system is fast and reliable, providing you with detailed alarm information in formats that are clear and legible.

Any plant floor variable can be logged and trended. A trend builds a picture over time of how the variable (product output, level, temperature etc.) is changing or how a device or process is performing. Citect trends are created from a selection of sample values. The sample values are plotted against time, and the resultant graph gives you an indication of process behaviour. Trend samples can be taken periodically, or when specific events occur in your system. Sampling rates can be as frequent as 10 milliseconds or as moderate as 24 hours.

Reports can be generated in a number of different formats.They can include formatted text, current and historical data, and even the results of calculations. They can also contain operating instructions — to change operations or variables within your plant, download instructions, perform diagnostics or change recipes. Reports can be displayed on a page at runtime, printed when the report runs or saved for printing or display at a later date. You can use a text editor or word processor to view, edit or print these reports. Your reports can be saved in HTML format, so that they can be viewed over the Internet, using a standard web browser.