Ignition Foundations: Design Standards
As we dive into more and more Ignition Vision to Perspective Conversions, we’re finding that other companies have experienced some of the same development challenges we had early in our Ignition journey. While generally harmless for small scale projects, these beginner missteps can cause headaches as a project’s scope grows, becomes part of an enterprise scale architecture, or is rolled out to multiple gateways.
Our new Ignition Foundations series will teach you how to start strong—and on the right foot—with Ignition.
We’ve found certain approaches which work better than others for Ignition design and development. And while well-meaning, sometimes the documentation or software engineering habits (including some which may be regarded as best practices) from other software packages can lead to problems when working with Ignition at scale.
Ignition Design Standards
At Corso Systems, we begin any Ignition project by listing, defining, and documenting a design standard. Typically, this is a document with screenshots of various graphical elements, tag structures, implementation details, as well as descriptions and requirements for each item in the standard.
If you’ve ever seen a project without a consistent look and feel—and where multiple companies have implemented various scopes of work—then you’ve seen a project which needed a design standard. Creating one before beginning any project work would have made life a lot easier for everyone involved.
Over the life of a project, the design standard will grow to encompass new technology while maintaining a consistent look and feel for your users.
Each company’s design standard will look different based on their specific needs. Our template begins with the following items which we often see on most if not all projects:
Window Layout
Title Bar
Navigation Strategy
At-a-glance Alarm Strategy
Project Branding
Color Schemes
Text/Fonts
Backend Considerations
Gateway Architecture
Security
Database Management/Connectivity
Communication Protocol Integrations
Operator Interface
Color Schemes
Interlocks/Permissives
Alarms
Process Equipment Graphics
Alarm Strategy for the project as a whole
Tag Management
UDTs
Folder Structures
History Considerations
Analytics and Trending Strategies
Reporting
Setting Up Your Project For Success
While it may seem like our design standard documents go into a lot of detail, they typically cover many areas you should consider before beginning any Ignition project.
For example, by thinking through the requirements of your design, you will discover where you can use Templates. You’ll see how to manage your Tag Bindings to simplify project management, and how to manage critical items like alarms and alarm notifications.
By taking the time up front to define everything you will be using in your project, you will simplify the development, deployment, and commissioning of your system.
Future-Proof Your Ignition Installation
By developing your design standards sooner rather than later, you will help future proof your system. Any new developers who will work in your facility can get up to speed quickly by reference existing projects along with the design standards document. The design standards can guide any new work, so it will look and function as your team expects.
As you update/upgrade your Ignition system with new technology and tools, applying the same design standards means that your team can continue working with a familiar and consistent look and feel. You can also keep the design standards up to date by adding in new sections as new tools become available.
For example, we have worked with many of our customers for a long time—from before Cirrus Link released their MQTT Modules for Ignition. Once our customers were ready to adopt MQTT, we referenced their specific design standards for their tags and UDTs, then added a section for MQTT specific data. With the release of Sparkplug B, we similarly added more detail where necessary.
Wrapping Up
Developing a set of design standards from scratch can be daunting—we know, we’ve done it! But, we now also have invaluable experience from working with companies to understand and document their systems. Once we know what we are working with, we can quickly correlate the information with our standards templates and create a document with all of the relevant information clearly defined.
With design standards in place, we can confidently begin development. We can also ensure that the project has a clear design goal and framework—so everyone is working in the same direction.
If you need help mapping out, defining, and documenting design standards for your company, please reach out and let us know! We’d love to help you get to your goals!
