Vijeo Citect Cicode Programming Study Guide Version 7.30

Schneider-Electric Pty (Australia) Ltd 78 Waterloo Road Macquarie Park NSW 2113 Australia

DISCLAIMER Schneider Electric makes no representations or warranties with respect to this manual and, to the maximum extent permitted by law, expressly limits its liability for breach of any warranty that may be implied to the replacement of this manual with another. Furthermore, Schneider Electric reserves the right to revise this publication at any time without incurring an obligation to notify any person of the revision. The information provided in this documentation contains general descriptions and/or technical characteristics of the performance of the products contained herein. This documentation is not intended as a substitute for and is not to be used for determining suitability or reliability of these products for specific user applications. It is the duty of any such user or integrator to perform the appropriate and complete risk analysis, evaluation and testing of the products with respect to the relevant specific application or use thereof. Neither Schneider Electric nor any of its affiliates or subsidiaries shall be responsible or liable for misuse of the information that is contained herein. If you have any suggestions for improvements or amendments or have found errors in this publication, please notify us. All pertinent state, regional, and local safety regulations must be observed when installing and using this product. For reasons of safety and to help ensure compliance with documented system data, only the manufacturer should perform repairs to components. When devices are used for applications with technical safety requirements, the relevant instructions must be followed. Failure to use Schneider Electric software or approved software with our hardware products may result in injury, harm, or improper operating results. Failure to observe this information can result in injury or equipment damage. © 2006 - 2013 Schneider Electric. All rights reserved.

Schneider Electric Vijeo Citect Cicode Programming Study Guide INTRODUCTION AND LEGAL NOTICE Your purchase of this official Vijeo Citect Upgrade Training Manual entitles you to undertake the Vijeo Citect Upgrade training course. Satisfactory completion of the course evaluation is mandatory for you to obtain a Schneider Electric certificate of completion of the training course. The contents of this manual are proprietary to Schneider Electric and all rights, including copyright, are reserved by Schneider Electric. No part of this document may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without express written permission of Schneider Electric. Schneider Electric will not accept any liability for action taken in reliance on this training manual.

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Validity Note The present documentation is intended for qualified technical personnel responsible for the implementation, operation and maintenance of the products described. It contains information necessary for the proper use of the products. Electrical equipment should be installed, operated, serviced, and maintained only by qualified personnel. No responsibility is assumed by Schneider Electric for any consequences arising out of the use of this material. A qualified person is one who has skills and knowledge related to the construction and operation of the electrical equipment and installations and has received safety training to recognize and avoid the hazards involved.

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Contents CHAPTER 1:

V7.30 CICODE PROGRAMMING EXAM TOPICS OVERVIEW ............. 1-1

Function Structure.......................................................................................................... 1-3 Variables, Datatypes and Data Structures ...................................................................... 1-4 Flow Control .................................................................................................................. 1-5 Logic .............................................................................................................................. 1-6 Statements ...................................................................................................................... 1-7 Input and Output ............................................................................................................ 1-8 Parameter Passing .......................................................................................................... 1-9 Error Handling ............................................................................................................. 1-10 Debugging .................................................................................................................... 1-11 Programming Standards ............................................................................................... 1-12

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Chapter 1: v7.30 Cicode Programming Exam Topics Overview Introduction

Cicode Programming is the second of the CSCE exams. This exam is based around information that is covered in the Cicode Programming Course .

This Chapter Covers These Topics:  Function Structure

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 Variables, Datatypes and Data Structures

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 Flow Control

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 Logic

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 Statements

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 Input and Output

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 Parameter Passing

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 Error Handling

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 Debugging

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 Programming Standards

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Cicode Development Environment Programming Language

Cicode is a simple, easy-to-use computer programming language designed especially for plant monitoring and control applications. It is a structured language similar to Visual Basic or 'C', however you need no previous programming experience to use it. Using Cicode, you have access to all real-time data (variables) in the Vijeo Citect project, and all Vijeo Citect facilities - variable tags, alarms, trends, reports, and so on. You can use Cicode to interface to various resources on the computer, such as the operating system and communication ports. Cicode supports advanced features including pre-emptive multi-tasking, multithreads, and remote procedure calls that will be discussed later in this course.

Suggested Exercises

Use these suggested exercises to increase your understanding of the topic.  Create and save Cicode function libraries.  Experiment with the automated layout functionality within the editor.  Use comments to disable sections of cicode.

Further Reading

Use the following references to assist your understanding of the topic.  Vijeo Citect Help Topic - The Cicode Editor.

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Function Structure User Functions

Vijeo Citect is supplied with over 600 in-built functions. One or a combination of these functions can usually perform most tasks in your system. However, where system functionality cannot be achieved with in-built functions, you can write your own functions. A Cicode function is a small program that may contain a collection of statements, variables, operators, conditional executors, and functions, in fact, of all the elements of Cicode.

Suggested Exercises

Use these suggested exercises to increase your understanding of the topic.  Revise the syntax of Cicode functions.  Make a small Cicode program to create a standard Microsoft ActiveX Listbox at runtime, and fill this listbox with three items, and then select one of these items, and then store the value of the item in a DiskPLC variable.

Further Reading

Use the following references to assist your understanding of the topic.  Vijeo Citect Help Topic - Cicode Function syntax.  Vijeo Citect Help Topic - Converting and Formatting Cicode Variables.

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Variables, Datatypes and Data Structures Operators

Cicode is used to manipulate data and perform tasks. Data manipulation is achieved using five classes of operators. These are the Mathematical, Bit, Logical, Relational and Format operators.

Suggested Exercises

Use these suggested exercises to increase your understanding of the topic.  Review the Cicode Programming Training manual.  Create Global, Module and Local variable declarations along with assigning default values to the declared variables.  Determine maximum array size limits.

Further Reading

Use the following references to assist your understanding of the topic.  Vijeo Citect Help Topic - Using Variables.  Vijeo Citect Help Topic - Using Arrays.  Vijeo Citect Help Topic - Variable declaration.

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Flow Control Four Conditional Executors

The statements that control decisions and loops in your functions are called conditional executors. Cicode uses four conditional executors: IF, FOR, WHILE and SELECT CASE.

Suggested Exercises

Use these suggested exercises to increase your understanding of the topic.  Review the syntax of the four types of Conditional Executor in Cicode.  Create functions that test the functionality of the Conditional Executors.

Further Reading

Use the following references to assist your understanding of the topic.  Vijeo Citect Help Topic - Working with Conditional Executors.

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Logic Use of Logic in Cicode

Cicode supports the use of all major Logical operators: AND, OR, XOR, NOT.

Suggested Exercises

Use these suggested exercises to increase your understanding of the topic.  Create simple logic statements to test the order of precedence and also to be sure that you understand how statements are executed.

Further Reading

Use the following references to assist your understanding of the topic.  Vijeo Citect Help Topic - Using Logical Operators

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Statements Doing the Work

Statements are used to execute Cicode Functions and also to assign values (or the results of Cicode Functions) to variables and to Variable Tags. Statements also include the ability to exchange information between variable of differing datatypes - for instance converting an Integer to a String or vice versa. The various operators (addition, subtraction, multiplication etc) have an order of precedence (they are not executed left-to-right or right-to-left)

Suggested Exercises

Use these suggested exercises to increase your understanding of the topic.  Review the Order of Precedence of Operators.  Create Cicode fragments to assign values and call functions.  Confirm your knowledge of datatype conversion functions.

Further Reading

Use the following references to assist your understanding of the topic.  Vijeo Citect Help Topic - Working with Operators.  Vijeo Citect Help Topic - Converting and Formatting Cicode Variables.  Vijeo Citect Help Topic - Order of Precedence of Operators.

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Input and Output Interact with the Operator

In addition to acting on data sourced from the plant via Variable Tags, there are occasions when it is necessary to interact with the operator in order to either request values (perhaps the name of the next recipe or the adjusted setpoint value for some parameter) or to provide other information - often via the prompt field on the screen. Generally, the Input and the Prompt Cicode functions are used for this, although others are also available.

Suggested Exercises

Use these suggested exercises to increase your understanding of the topic.  Understand the datatype of the various input and output functions and be familiar with how to ensure data is sent or received in the necessary datatype.  Be familiar with key sequences for data input.  Test the use of the ArgX and ArgValueX items.

Further Reading

Use the following references to assist your understanding of the topic.  Vijeo Citect Help Topic - Defining Key Sequences for Commands.  Vijeo Citect Help Topic - Input.  Vijeo Citect Help Topic - Prompt.  Vijeo Citect Help Topic - FormNumPad.

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Parameter Passing Provide Information for a Function to work with

In order to make Cicode Functions flexible and reusable, it is normal to provide a list of parameters for them to work with as arguments to the function. Clearly the only alternative would be to define some large list of fixed Global variables. When passing parameters to a function, the programmer must make sure that the parameters appear in the correct order and have the proper datatypes.

Suggested Exercises

Use these suggested exercises to increase your understanding of the topic.  Create Cicode Functions with default parameters for use when the parameter is not provided.  Call functions with missing parameters.  Test the application of datatypes to function parameters.

Further Reading

Use the following references to assist your understanding of the topic.  Vijeo Citect Help Topic - Parameters.  Vijeo Citect Help Topic - Function Argument Structure.

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Error Handling Deal with Problems

There are many situations where your programs must handle unexpected events. These might range from a file not existing when you request to open it to attempting to read from a non-existent array item. You should write your software to minimise these issues as much as possible and also to gracefully handle the ones you can't catch.

Further Reading

Use the following references to assist your understanding of the topic.  Vijeo Citect Help Topic - Defensive Programming.  Vijeo Citect Help Topic - Using Cicode Programming Standards.

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Debugging Cicode Editor as a Debugger

The Cicode Editor can function in debug mode, to analyse running Cicode. Debugging Cicode requires that Vijeo Citect is running, though you can turn debugging on and off as required. The operation of the debugger is controlled through Debug Options, with some options only taking effect on startup.

Suggested Exercises

Use these suggested exercises to increase your understanding of the topic.  Review how the Cicode language supports multi-tasking and preempting.  Review the use of the Cicode Editor in Debug mode.  Add some breakpoints to the program you created earlier and use the Cicode debugger to step through it, by breakpoint and line by line.

Further Reading

Use the following references to assist your understanding of the topic.  Vijeo Citect Help Topic - Debugging Cicode.  Vijeo Citect Help Topic - Using breakpoints.  Vijeo Citect Help Topic - Stepping through code.

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Programming Standards Fundamentals of Good Design

One of the critical aspects to follow on from the earlier concepts of Error Handling and Defensive Programming is "Good Design." the better designed your software is, the easier it will be to deal with errors and exceptions. Software should be written with as much of the code hidden as PRIVATE functions in order to not accidentally call functions which have not been configured for global use. Similarly, unless a variable must be made available globally, it should be declared as a MODULE variable or even kept local to a function.

Suggested Exercises

Use these suggested exercises to increase your understanding of the topic.  Experiment with declaring PUBLIC and PRIVATE Functions.  Investigate the difference between Blocking and Non-Blocking functions.  Read widely on programming techniques.

Further Reading

Use the following references to assist your understanding of the topic.  Vijeo Citect Help Topic - Function Scope.  Vijeo Citect Help Topic - Formatting Functions.

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