Welcome to the Software Toolbox ISA Tech Expo 1999 Resource Website. We're glad you attended the ISA Tech Expo 1999 and hope that you found our presentations informative and useful.  This webpage is provided as a service to you after the show to download presentation copies, sample code, and other resources from things we talked about at the show with you. "HMI Applications with Visual Basic, OPC and ActiveX" Presented Tuesday, October 5, 1999 - 10 AM - 2 PM by John Weber Download the presentation in Powerpoint format (335 Kb) Resources for use in completing the tutorial shown in the presentation: Download OPC Server demonstration install set - includes demos of OPC drivers to talk to 38 different devices plus a free simulator driver that lets you test your programs without any PLC hardware, the OPC Automation wrapper which it installs automatically along with a 2nd VB example program (4.7 Mb) Download a zip file containing the Visual Basic program created in the presentation (11 Kb) Download the OPC Data Access Automation Wrapper Installation set - only download this if you do not download the OPC Server demonstration install set and want to use VB with an existing OPC server you already have on your machine. (890 Kb) Abstract of the paper This presentation is a tutorial format that will teach you how to use Visual Basic as an OPC client to connect to data sources throughout your plant or to other applications supporting the OPC Data Access interface.  Although the sample shown will be for human machine interface, the concepts and technologies explained can be used in MES, ERP, or any other automation application where software applications need to be connected using the OPC Data Access specification and Visual Basic is the chosen tool. "Applying Internet Technology to Production Environment Monitoring"  Presented in Room 103A, Thursday, October 7, 1999 - 10:15 - 11:30 AM Presented with Jeff Fleming and Alberto Tafur of Unifi Technology Group Download Copy of paper in Acrobat PDF Format (409 Kb) Download Presentation in Powerpoint Format (1706 Kb) Abstract of the Paper With the growing number of internet users, a familiarity with the web browser interface provides a substantial advantage to systems that use this interface to display information. Anyone who uses a computer today is able to easily navigate through a browser interface. By leveraging the user's familiarity with this technology, a common user interface can be used from the plant floor operator to the CEO at a remote location. The purpose of this paper is to present the advantages of using internet/intranet technology in a production environment to control and monitor existing systems. By providing an application based on a three-tiered architecture with a platform independent client, a developer can deliver production environment information to every level of the company. Using object-oriented technology in conjunction with Ethernet networking reduces the cost and time to market and shortens the classic implementation cycle. This paper shows how this open architecture implementation enhances data flow through enterprise and legacy systems. The design criteria for this interface were transparency, portability, flexibility, and simplicity. Using the common interface provides transparency to the data source. The browser, by nature, is both portable and flexible. Finally, a good layout of the web pages provides a very simple interface that can be used by anyone on any platform.