Visualising action in progress

Hi all,

I am implementing a WinCC project (WinCC Professional v13) in which certain sequences have to take place. Some of the steps take long time and I would like to visualise this to the user, so that he knows that for exmple after pressing a button, there is an action carried out and the system still works on his request. This should be something similar to what Microsoft does for instance. When Windows carries out an action there is a nice graphics shown with dots moving in a circle. Something similar to what I found on the internet. This does not have to be that fancy, but in a similar manner.

Does anyone have an idea how to easily implement that? A .gif file in a picture object for instance?

Thanks for any hints.

Hello shibby901,

WinCC professional doesn't really supports moving gifs.

(You can't use the graphic view, it only shows the first frame. You can use the HTML browser control, but it doesn't look good, because you can't hide the border, there is always on scroll bar and you have a quite big empty-white distance between the borders and your gif.)

One possibility is to use the same method used here:

• "Gauge Controls for Basic Panels"
  https://support.industry.siemens.com/cs/ww/en/view/48052573

It's basically a graphic list of some Frames which is triggerd by a saw-tooth in the PLC.

You can read the details of how it is done here:

• "Toolbox for HMI Projects in machine-based Area (SIMATIC HMI Panels and SIMATIC WinCC Runtime Advanced)"
  https://support.industry.siemens.com/cs/ww/en/view/106226404
  (Chapter "Simplified Engineering")

There is a download for a rotation tool, which is a add in for Excel with which you can create your frames and a graphic list in one go. You can also use a program that can edit gifs and save the frames individually. You can simply drag&drop your frames into the graphic list in the project.

The saw tooth block and its description can be found here:

• "Library of general functions (LGF) for STEP 7 (TIA Portal) and S7-1200 / S7-1500"
  https://support.industry.siemens.com/cs/ww/en/view/109479728
  

You could enable the sawtooth with a bit that is set when your process starts and is reset when the process is finished.

There is another, quite cheap method:

Use a line and change its rotation angle via script. You can call the script on the "Change value" event of the saw-tooth tag or a simple counter or timer.

If you increas the width of the line, set the style to "Points", choose a nice foregound and background color combination and maybe use three lines to make like a simple star...
... it might look halfway decent.

Hi H.J.,

I used your proposal and implemented something myself. I draw several white lines and alligned them to form a circle. Each line has a white background which I change with a scheduled tasks, executed every 250ms. The scheduled task will implement a simple counter (counting from 1 to number of lines) and change the appropriate objects (line) background to black. It does not look that fancy, but it does what I wanted. I do observe some lags sometimes, but this is how the objects are refreshed by WinCC and this I can't influence.

Thanks!