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Training And Development

LOADING OF PRESAVED FORMS in the REAL TIME PLOT DISPLAY

OVERVIEW
A new option has been added to the Real Time Plot (RTPLOT) program. This new option allows
the user to load a FORM definition and view the plot directly from the command line.

THEORY OF OPERATION
The Real Time Plot program looks to see if a command line option was included when the
program was invoked. If no command line options are found it proceeds to put up the user input
form exactly as before. The contents of the form will be the contents of the form from when the
user last ran the program.
If a command line option was included on the command line, it will be taken to be the name of a
PreSaved Form. PreSaved Forms are defined in a special PreSaved Form file located in the
F:\RUNTIME directory. This ASCII file defines a list of PreSaved Forms. These PreSaved
Forms include information to fill in the Title, Elapsed Time, and point list to be entered onto the
user entry form. The form is then checked for validity. If any fields on the form are invalid
(such as an invalid point name) the user will be left editing the form with the invalid fields
highlighted. If all fields in the form are valid, the plot will be displayed.
The PreSaved Form file for the Real Time Plot program is an ASCII file located as:
F:\RUNTIME\RTPLOT.PSF
This file should be edited using an ASCII editor to define the PreSaved Forms desired for each
site. There is no limit to the number of PreSaved Forms that you may have in this file. Each
PreSaved Form is given an OPTION name, and it is the name of the OPTION that is used as the
command line parameter to the Real Time Plot program.

FORMAT OF PRESAVED FORM DEFINITION FILE

The F:\RUNTIME\RTPLOT.PSF file contains a set of PreSaved Forms in an ASCII format.
Lines that start with a semi-colon are taken to be comment lines and are ignored. Each PreSaved
Form is started with an OPTION line which specifies the name of this PreSaved Form. The
OPTION line starts with the keyword OPTION in column one (1). The name of the option
follows inside a set of quotes. (Quoted strings are used because the option can include
embedded spaces.)
OPTION "Option name"
Each OPTION has a set of parameter lines that follow to define the various parameters used to
fill in the form. These lines must be indented by at least one space under the OPTION line. The
parameter lines include:
TITLE "<title>"
The TITLE line defines the title centered at the top of the screen. It is a quoted string that can be
up to 32 characters long.

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g GE Power Systems
Training And Development

ELAPSED "<delta time>"

The ELAPSED line defines the elapsed time of the plot.
The <delta time> parameter is a normal delta time string. It is enclosed in quotes since delta
times do include a space. The format of a delta time is: DDDD HH:MM:SS.CC. The delta times
for real time plots usually range from
2 to 60 minutes.
POINT "<unit>" "<signal>" <low_counts> <high_counts>
The POINT line defines a trace to be included on the plot. The definition of the point matches
the fields of the form. One POINT line is included for each trace on the plot.
The <unit> parameter is the name of the desired unit. If this is not included, then the point will
be displayed from the currently selected unit. This is a quoted string since the unit name can be
blank.
The <signal> parameter is the name of the signal to plot. This must be the Mark V signal name,
it can not be a synonym. (The synonym name, however, is what the user will see on the screen.)
The <low_counts> and <high_counts> parameters are the raw counts for the range of the Y axis.
These are specified in raw counts so that the values are valid no matter what engineering units
the user has selected.

SAMPLE DATA FILE

The following sample PreSaved Form data file defines a plot of the Plant Output to be the MW
and MVAR traces of the two units over a 1/2 hour period.
Sample F:\RUNTIME\RTPLOT.PSF
|; This file holds the PreSaved Forms for the Real Time Plot |
|; program. |
|; |
| |
|OPTION "Plant Output" |
| TITLE "Plant Output" |
| ELAPSED "0000 00:30:00.0" |
| POINT "T1" "MW" -1280 12800 ; -10..100 MW |
| POINT "T2" "MW" -1280 12800 |
| POINT "T1" "MVAR" -3840 7680 ; -30..60 MVAR |
| POINT "T2" "MVAR" -3840 7680 |

USING THE PRESAVED FORM FROM THE MAIN MENU

To create a main menu option that includes the use of a PreSaved Form, you should include the
name of the PreSaved Form as a parameter to the Real Time Plot (RTPLOT) program. The
PreSaved Form name is not case sensitive, so you may use upper, lower, or mixed case.
For example: To create a main menu option for the above sample Plant Output plot, you would
make the following addition to the main menu data file:
Addition to F:\RUNTIME\MENU.DAT
" Plant Output Plot" "g:\exec\rtplot.exe" "Plant Output"

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