Hello all,

I have an interesting problem if anyone is interested to help me? Sorry if something similar has been posted to the forum before but I looked for couldn't find it.

I have an HMI (IPC277E 19'' Touch PN/IE) running WinCC runtime advanced and a CPU 1512C-1 PN.

I have a recipe called "clean in place" and it has 85 variable elements that are used to define a clean in place program in the PLC so that different cleaning times, routes or other variables can be set by the user. 

The problem is that this setup still means that the user still has to follow a rigid cleaning sequence and they can only change timings, routes and quantities (of say water used) and they want to be able to completely vary the step sequence of the cleaning program. So they can have 10 steps and step 1 will be a tank drain then step 2 will be a rinse and step 3 will be a CIP recirculation and so on but they want to be able to change that step sequence as they see fit.

Unfortunately this will likely mean I will need a lot of elements in the recipe to make this happen and using the standard recipe view provided by Siemens on the HMI will make editing the recipe very convoluted and confusing for the user. 

Is there a way to only display certain elements based on what step type the user has specified?
Can anyone think of a better way of doing what I have explained above?
Can you even understand what I have explained above or is it explained badly? 

I was considering "Multiplexing Arrays of UDTs" as explained in this blog. But that will be a lot of work but if that is the way to do it then so be it 

Thanks in advance!

I have done this sort of thing before. Don't use the built in recipe editor. Let the user pick from a selection of commands for each step (pull down list). Then make visible, entry boxes for each operand of that command (Labels and data entry boxes).

Step  Cmd   Op1   Op2   Op3
1        Drain  2m
2        water  15gal 30s
3        Agitate 2m     30s
4        Drain   2m
5        Stylize  5gal   30s
6        Agitate 30s    30s
...
50      End

Each step can be filled in with its own row, tab, or screen. The last step has to be End. An array exists for the commands and each operand. Then program side, you can step through the array by incrementing an Index. only executing subroutines for each command and gets the operands needed from the array's.

The water step could contain an operand for Agitate time and Drain. I would then name the command Rinse...