National Instruments BridgeVIEW How Do You Connect a Tag to an OPC Server?, How Do You Connect a Tag to a DDE Server?, How Do You Define a Group of Tags for Alarming?

Chapter 3 Tag Configuration

selecting Append Tags to SCF? (default mode) or you can create a new

configuration file.

How Do You Connect a Tag to an OPC Server?

You connect to an OPC server just like you connect to the National

Instruments device servers from the Connection tab of the Tag

Configuration dialog box. Any OPC servers installed on your machine

are listed in the server name list. Select the OPC server you want to use.

Create an I/O Group for the server, specifying the group deadband and

update rate. Select or enter the Item name, which is the same as the OPC

Server Item ID. You also can select or enter an access path for OPC servers

if the server supports that.

How Do You Connect a Tag to a DDE Server?

Although no BridgeVIEW servers are based on Dynamic Data

Exchange (DDE), you can connect a tag to any existing DDE Server.

Select DDE Server as your server in the Connection tab of the Tag

Configuration Editor to communicate with DDE servers. DDE Servers

have an Application Name, Topic, and Item. In BridgeVIEW, the device

in the I/O Group Configuration dialog box is set to appname|topic

(| = the “pipe” symbol) and the item in the Connection tab of the

Tag Configuration dialog box is set to item. For example, to connect

a tag to cell R1C1 (item) of spreadsheet sheet1 (topic) in Excel

(application), set the tag fields to the following:

Server: DDE Server

Device: Excel|sheet1 (in I/O Group Configuration dialog box)

Item: R1C1

To specify a particular sheet (sheet1) within an open Excel file

(book1.xls), set the device field to the following:

Device: Excel|[book1.xls]sheet1 (in I/O Group Configuration

dialog box)

How Do You Define a Group of Tags for Alarming?

While editing a tag, pull down the Tag Group Ring in the General tab of

the Tag Configuration dialog box. You can select an existing tag group or

define a new tag group by selecting Enter New…. To create, edit, or delete

tag group definitions, select Tag Groups… from the Configure menu

from the main Tag Configuration Editor panel.