Ti2 Pty Ltd

General Information About 4Control Engineering

Main Windows
When 4CONTROL is started, the 4C Engineering main window appears on the screen with no project loaded.

The Navigator View
Using the Navigator View or Navigator, you can navigate through the project currently loaded in 4C Engineering. Therefore, the Navigator is the main tool for creating and managing objects in 4C Engineering. The Navigator view, in turn, has 4 views (File , Class, Target, Debug). You can switch between them by clicking the respective tab. 

Each navigator view offers a different view of the organization structure of the project currently opened in 4C Engineering. This representation defines which objects are displayed in the tree-like structure and how they are arranged in it. For details on the representation and organization of the individual Navigator views and on using the Navigator, see Navigating in a Project.

The Object List
The object list displays all objects of the current project. Instances which are created automatically by 4CONTROL, as well as individual global variables and constants are not shown. Global variables and constants are each grouped in a pool in the Navigator view.

By clicking a column header, you can sort the object list on this column. This function is available for all columns. Except for the Class column, all columns are sorted alphabetically. The Class column is sorted as defined by the IEC-61131-3 programming model. 

With a double-click on an individual component, you can open its editor. To manage an object using the context menu items, click on the component with the right mouse button. Its context menu is displayed.

The Watch View
In the Watch view, you can monitor the variable values and the values of expressions of a project downloaded to a runtime system and change the values of variables.

Message View (Compile)
The Compile tab is displayed when you compile one or more targets. All status information, warnings (warning) and error messages (error) which have been issued during compilation are logged here. Errors and warnings which were issued for an object (e.g. syntax errors in the source code) are displayed together with the respective object name. The error position (e.g. line, column) is indicated as well.

Message View (Download)
On the Download tab, the downloading process for each target is logged including all errors that might have occurred.

Message View (Target Name)
In addition to runtime information concerning the target, the Target Name tab displays information on memory management, connection status and other activities. The name on the tab is identical to the target name. For each target, a separate tab is created which opens automatically when the target is connected to the runtime system. This tab has its own toolbar. You can use its icons to open a connection to 4C Control and to monitor and debug the configuration at runtime.

Breakpoint View
The Debug window lists all breakpoints set in the current project, including the name of the instance in which they were set and their position within this instance.

Watch Points View
Watchpoints are used to permanently display POU variable values in the editors. As with data tips, the data values are displayed in the editors separately for each POU instance. To set a watch point, click on the variable for which you want to insert a watch point with the right mouse button. In the context menu which opens, select the Set Watchpoint menu option. Using the mouse, you can drag previously set watch points to any position in the editor. The following figure shows watch points in the ST editor.

4C Engineering provides a text editor which can be used to create and edit ASCII text. To simplify its use, this text editor was designed according to the Microsoft standard which has also been used for the Notepad and Wordpad text editors from Microsoft and for other common text editors for MS Windows user interfaces. The 4C Engineering text editor does not have a separate toolbar.

Whenever you edit 4C Engineering objects in the text editor, syntax coloring is enabled. Syntax coloring ensures that IEC 61131-3 and ST keywords are displayed in blue text color immediately after they have been entered. Comments are displayed in green and text strings in gray text color. The following figure shows an example of syntax coloring applied to a POU of the Structured Text type.

In the 4C text editor, you can set bookmarks which allow you to go quickly and conveniently to specific text lines. Bookmarks are displayed outside the editing area at the left margin of the text editor as light blue boxes with rounded corners.

The 4C graphic editor is used for programming POUs in one of the IEC 61131-3 programming languages: FBD, LD, or SFC. The editor is subdivided into the text-based declaration area (POU header) and the graphics area which contains the program logic (POU body). Both areas have their own horizontal and vertical scrollbars. You can change the vertical size (height) of an area by dragging the separation line between the two areas with the mouse. The contents of the two areas is stored together in a single file with the name POUname.4gr. The .4gr file extension indicates that the POU was written using a graphic programming language.

In the 4C graphic editor, you can set so-called bookmarks both in the declaration area (see: Bookmarks in the Text Editor) and in the graphics area. This enables you to quickly and conveniently move to certain positions in the source code. Bookmarks in the graphics area are displayed as rounded squares and can be inserted anywhere you want.