New And Improved In 9.1

Top Features

Responsive Dashboards

Dashboards quickly convey volumes of data in a compact and easily accessible format.

  • Responsive layouts allow your dashboard to intelligently resize based on the viewing device.
  • Easily drag & drop panels to display Grids, Trend Charts, Pie Charts, Bar Charts, Gauges, and more!
  • Add any Symbol Library object – whether built-in or one of your own creation!
  • Create groups to control responsive behavior for the entire group of items separate from the overall page.
  • Create dashboards for both .NET and HTML5 clients from the same engineering environment.
  • Supports our new Project Themes for quick styling!

Themes

We support BOTH Engineering Environment Themes AND Project Themes!

Engineering Environment Themes

  • Choose from multiple themes for the style you like best (have a favorite color scheme?), or to suit your viewing environment (dark mode anyone?!)
  • Open multiple projects or multiple copies of the same project and EACH can have its own theme to make it easier and faster to tell which project you’re working in or referencing.

Project Themes

  • Allow users to easily pick a theme with our new theme selector to best suit their environment or visual abilities.
  • Easily build your own theme or use one of our prebuilt themes.
  • Have an item or even an entire screen you don’t want to follow the prescribed theme? A simple checkbox allows you to do that!

High Performance Graphics

New in 9.1 are High Performance Graphic symbols pre-made for you!  Including an intelligent HPG Alarm symbol!

We’ve also updated the Symbol Library menu to make it quicker to find High Performance or Standard style symbols.

All of our symbol objects are vector based, so they resize intelligently across all displays.

And, since you can create displays for both .NET and HTML5 we’re making sure you can use our Symbols in BOTH display types – so you get the same experience regardless of your user display needs!

Don’t forget, our symbols are powerful objects! With the ability to contain multiple data references (think “input parameters”) – making them easy to replicate and use for multiple purposes, while easily tying them to data-driven actions (such as showing color, or running/off states, etc.)

And you can also make your own symbols, with any data links you want built in as well. You can also tie them to a datatype, so, for instance, do you want a pump object to appear every time you drag an integer datatype onto the screen – you can!

You can also make your own data types, so you could actually make a pump data type, with sub-parameters, and link it to a symbol, and automatically dropping that PumpUDT on the screen will bring ALL those data parameters with it – automatically!

Visual SQL Query Builder

Our Visual SQL Query Builder allows you to visually and rapidly connect, build, and test your SQL queries before using them in your project.

  • Connect, build, and test queries visually in the same design environment – no need to install or open additional software.
  • Visually select databases, tables, and columns.
  • Visually create relationships (joins) between entities.
  • Every visual item and action builds the SQL query for you in real-time.
  • Test your query in the builder to verify you are getting the data you want before using the query in your project.
  • Got it working like you want? Copy paste your new query wherever you need it in your project, and you’re assured it will work, because you’ve already tested it.

Python Integration

Our Python Integration opens a great way to extend your projects with Python.  Vastly increase the power and reach of your existing Python code by easily integrating it with FactoryStudio!

  • Supports ANY version of Python regardless of version (3.x and 2.x).
  • Access the Python namespace from within FactoryStudio Scripts, Tasks, and CodeBehind.
  • Execute (call) your Python code from within your projects (even NumPy, Matplotlib, etc).
  • Create Python code that can interact with your FactoryStudio project!
  • Create a task that executes your external Python code and even passes parameters both ways, all without a single line of code in your project!
  • Schedule your task to fire at set times or execute it as a function of a trigger. (e.g. Event-based triggers)
  • Machine Learning and AI integration made easy!

BONUS: We already support C#, VB.NET, and JavaScript!

Project Templates

Pre-built Project Templates get you started faster building the solutions you need.

  • Pre-defined displays AND layouts.
  • Multiple Template types include:
  • Blank Project
  • Default Project
  • TrendChart Project
  • TrendChart with Alarm Pages Project
  • TrendChart with Alarm Pages and Alarm Footer
  • Redundancy Project

(Each of the Projects includes the items from above and adds to it.)

  • Pre-built menus and headers

MQTT Broker and Clients

Our included MQTT broker and clients help you get connected safely, securely, and economically to a wide and growing variety of devices and systems.

  • Run our broker on its own or tied to a project.
  • Tied to a project, our MQTT broker can also expose all project namespaces and properties.
  • Our broker supports BOTH Sparkplug B clients AND original MQTT clients (that don’t use the Sparkplug B specification), such as Mosquitto.
  • Publish/Subscribe with ease – great for data-constrained or cost-constrained networks.
  • Great for use as an Edge of Network gateway or communications hub.

Industrial Icons Font

Our Industrial Icons Font makes it easy and quick to add modern looking icons to your projects.

  • Create consistent and modern layouts.
  • Save time by using an icon font rather than a jpeg/png from the web.
  • Common icons are included such as Home, Alarms, Warnings, Chart, Gauge, Settings, Search and more!
  • Easy and smooth resizing since the icon is actually a font!

Multi-Screen Engineering

Multi-Screen Engineering improvements speed development.

  • Open multiple displays and scripts at the same time.
  • Copy/Paste between .NET and HTML5 Displays (as shown here!)
  • Even change themes between the separate windows.
  • Makes code and display comparison easier and faster.
  • Bonus: The Displays and Scripts Breadcrumb (shortcut) bar at the top now allows you to remove a shortcut to help keep your working environment lean and clean.

Multi-Monitor Support

Create your projects to support multiple monitors.

Perfect for creating enterprise NOC or other Operations Control Room layouts, or even just dual-screen desktops.

Easily design different layouts for each screen.

Quickly specify which layout you want to appear on which screen.

Driver Highlights

Connectivity is a key feature of the FrameworX platform and FactoryStudio.

  • Simplify your architecture by removing standalone communication solutions (e.g. Kepware / Matrikon)
  • Easily setup a communications hub to support comms and logic between practically any device, any database, any historian, anywhere.
  • On-Premise or to/from the cloud – we have you covered!
  • Some popular drivers / protocols we support include the list shown here.
  • MQTT Broker and OPC Server are both built-in!
  • Our team has created more than 200 drivers over the years – if you need it, we either have it, or can help build it with our Communication Driver Toolkit.

Simulator Driver

Our new Simulator Driver gives you many options for data types, ranges, and control over which simulation values you can generate.

Pick from a list of data types (including Strings!), and set the Min & Max values you’d like them to range through.

For example, want to simulate a real-world analog device and its response to varying current of 4-20 mA? You can!

Rather use a range that was 0-25 mA so you can simulate a wire break with 0 mA? Do that too!

Remote Engineering & Multi-User Collaborative Development

Work Faster

Speed development by having a team of developers/engineers working at the same time in the same project – without the need for merging or importing.

Work Safer

FactoryStudio also supports Remote Engineering allowing you to have developers utilize a central shared repository and edit a project even when remote (not logged into the project server itself).

As long as they are on the same network they can get to their projects, keeping your server safer by reducing the number of people who need to directly and remotely log into it.

Auto-Start SmartClient

Helping to deliver maximum uptime for your users, the Auto-Start SmartClient (ASSC) is a self-healing watchdog application that helps ensure your remote SmartClient applications are always up and running.

  1. The ASSC periodically checks to ensure the TSmartClient is running.
  2. If not, then the ASSC checks to see if it can reach the Project on the Project Server.
  3. And if it can, the ASSC will restart the TSmartClient automatically for you!

{A SmartClient application is just one of the many ways you can start a client application – and is one of the easiest.

Just point at the server URL and you’re done.  No need to install other software – the SmartClient takes care of it all for you.

And now the Auto-Start SmartClient watchdog application makes sure your SmartClient is always up and running.}

Linux Runtime Improvements

Having supported projects running in Linux environments for years, we continue to make improvements to ensure your project experience in the Linux environment will be as close to the .NET experience as you can get.

You can design your projects once and ensure your end users will get the same experience regardless of which platform they use.

(We also support Windows, iOS, and Android and Web via HTML5 – all from the same project, and all at the same time!

And just like our Multi-OS support, we’re multi-language too! Projects support C#, VB.NET, JavaScript, and Python 2.x/3.x)

Secure Multi-Port Gateway

Ensure secure communications between multiple projects, nodes, or other systems you want to communicate with via our Secure Multi-Port Gateway.

Setup 1-to-1 communications to a single site, or setup 1-to-many communications for multiple sites running into the same “master” project.

In the example shown here we have created a business level project that can send requests to any of a group of sites, and all that traffic is handled via our Secure Multi-Port Gateway.

Our Secure Multi-Port Gateway ensures only the traffic that is supposed to go from point A to Point B, or Point A to Point E, etc., is allowed, while also keeping the sites themselves apart from each other, ensuring safe data communications.

Sparklines in DataGrids

Tiny but mighty!

Sparklines – powerful and tiny charts, are now embeddable in a DataGrid (Table).

Want to show a quick visual of past data or performance right next to the current value?  Now you can!

Use Sparkline trends right next to current values for improved context and possible indicator of where things are heading.

Stylin

Available in 4 styles, you can show your mighty-mini-charts using “Line”, “Area”, “Bar” or “WinLoss” formats.

Dynamic Cell Color in Reports

Improve your reports with Dynamic Cell Colors.  Calculated at run-time, you can vary the cell color of your report tables, making them deliver even more value faster.

Great for regulatory reporting as well as a quick visual history of when values were in or out of acceptable ranges.

Wish you could quickly spot areas that need attention in the shift report? Now you can!

Spend more time fixing issues, and celebrating wins, than staring at numbers trying to figure out what’s great, or not-so-great, about that last run.

Tags - Easy Finding & Renaming

Find and Teleport

Need to easily find every place a tag is used in your system?

You can with FactoryStudio! Find, sort, and filter to easily find the tag(s) of interest and ALL the locations it exists.

And then double click to go right to where that tag is used, whether in a display or even a line of code!

Bonus:

This also works for finding other things such as: Alarms, Displays, Reports, Scripts, Devices, Datasets, Historian Tables, and User Created Data Types (UDTs/Templates)

Powerful Renaming

Ever wish you could rename a tag in just ONE place, and EVERY place that tag was used in your project would automatically update?

You can with FactoryStudio!

Even rename a PART of a tag structure with our powerful templates. (e.g. Rename “Revs” to “RPM” even in a tag structure such as: “Area1.Line3.Wrap2.Motor5.Revs.Count”)

Finding and Removing Unused Tags, Devices, & More

Cleanup of your project is important during both project creation and maintenance.

Having unused items in your project makes troubleshooting, maintenance, and understanding your project more difficult and error prone.

So we make it easy to find and remove many unused things:

  • Tags
  • Devices
  • User Created Types
  • Reports
  • Datasets
  • Historian Tables

Now you can easily find if you’ve made any of the above, and either forgot to hook them up, haven’t used them yet, or don’t need them at all.