I had designed a system around Flows, but found out when trying to enter the second flow, once a work area has been used in a flow, it cannot be used again in another one?
We have a series of 6 conveyors that can (depending status) be either an unload area (for product to be de-palletised onto one of two conveyors), a load area (for empty product return containers from a third conveyor to be palletised onto) or for storage of empty pallets (in and out).
At the moment, i’m struggling to see how to do this! Currently i’ve set up 4 operation sets for the 6 multi-function conveyors (product place, product pick, pallet place and pallet pick) - am i doing this the wrong way?
A possibility (as i see it) is to have multiple projects, but how would i switch these in and out depending upon operation?
when you setup flows you have to decide which stations
are going to be used as master stations, i.e. stations where new palletising
jobs are started. Other work areas will become slave stations that serves the master stations with formats to pick or place.
There are some limitations/considerations:
A flow always allocates one master station. This station may not be used with other flows since this would cause a resource conflict if the flows were run in parallel.
A slave station may be shared among several flows.
A slave station can not handle pallet pattern operation sets having more than one format.
If you want to use the same station both as a master station in one flow and as a slave station with another flow you have to create two work areas for the same station.
Hi,
At most you would need two parallel work areas for each station, one master and one slave.
However, you do not need one work station for each job to be run on it (i.e. operation set). One flow can perform a sequence of very different jobs (different pallet pattern operation sets, pick or place). Having multiple flows is convenient when you perform multiple jobs in parallel. If you only intend to run one job at a time, you can use one flow for each project and then switch between the different projects.
BR Anders
I think i’ve sorted it out with flows, but now have an issue in running the project on the VC; when i try and start the project i get an error with a worrying message:
Error 112053 Failed to start project
Probable causes
The XML file is corrupted, or some internal error has occured
It says to check the log, but the only warning or error is ths one! Its not helping me here -but how do install an un-corrupted version of the XML file assuming that is the problem..?
This project was due to be installed this week - at the moment i can’t even get it to simulate and i can’t see the customer allowing an un-simulated project to be installed.
At this rate, i could have written something by hand quicker than trying to get Pickmaster to even work.
First thing, before you download, make sure that all project object are updated. You must not have any warning triangles on the project objects in the right pane. Open the configuration dialogues for these objects and press OK.
Second thing, make sure you get no warnings in the log when you start a download. Adjust the configuration according to the received messages.