
Network Design
and Setup
3–3
Network Design and Setup
Determine how you plan to use the information that is transferred. This may help you
design your network. For example, are you trying to share data between several
machines, or are you trying to obtain data to be used in production reports or
spreadsheets? Once you’ve taken a look at your application, you should be able to
identify the configuration needs. For example, our simple widget factory needs to
accomplish the following things.
Production Management: The production management system needs to issue
build orders and obtain data that can be used in production reports. The
management system also needs to monitor the production lines to determine which
line should receive the build orders. For example, one line may be behind schedule
while the other is completely free.
Production Lines 1 & 2: Each production line has a series of operations that must
be followed to build a finished product. Once they are completed they can be sent to
either pack station for packaging. In the real world, we all know that equipment
sometimes doesn’t work quite right, so each station should be monitored for
operational status.
Pack Stations: The finished products are sent to the pack stations, which in turn
send the cases to a palletizer for final shipping. Since there’s only one palletizer and
two stations packing different product models, the pack stations should coordinate
their deliveries.
Palletizer: The palletizer stacks the widgets into (hopefully) nice, neat packages of
widgets that can be sold by the millions.
Even though the three basic network configurations can be combined in an
application, each network remains independent. The master station from one
network cannot request data directly from slave stations on another network. This
does not mean you cannot obtain data from these networks, you can. It just requires
more than one interface for that slave station. For example, a DL440 PLC station
with two DCM (Data Communication Module) interfaces actually can connect to
three different networks. Check the manual for your particular slave station interface
to determine the maximum number allowed in a single base.
Built-in DirectNET Port
Network #1
DCMs
Networks #2 and #3
Identify Your
System
Requirements
Examine Data
Sharing
Requirements
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