Citect Upgrade Guide

 

 

Technical Paper

 

 

Abstract

This paper is a guide for the Citect Upgrade Procedure.

 

Contacts

support@citect.com

Contents

 

Citect Upgrade Guide

 

Contents

 

Introduction:.................................................................................................................. 1

Citect Upgrade Guide V1,2,3 or 4 to V5.x................................................................ 2

Quick Start Guide:....................................................................................................... 2

1: Backup your files:.................................................................................................... 3

Service Packs...................................................................................................... 3

Check Driver Files............................................................................................... 3

3rd party Software............................................................................................... 3

Citect Include Project........................................................................................... 4

Citect.FRM file..................................................................................................... 4

Others.................................................................................................................... 4

2: Determine if the project will upgrade:.................................................................... 5

3: Upgrading the Protection Key (Dongle):............................................................... 7

4: Installing the new version of Citect onto an existing Citect PC........................... 8

5. Integrating the New Version into your existing Plant.......................................... 10

6. Finished.................................................................................................................. 10

Trouble Shooting....................................................................................................... 11

General Tips....................................................................................................... 11

Citect Knowledge Base.................................................................................... 11

Known Pitfalls..................................................................................................... 11

Introduction:

 

Citect Upgrade Guide V1,2,3 or 4 to V5.x

Quick Start Guide:

 

Note: This is a generic description of what to do. Your particular situation may differ. Please think about what you are doing. If you have any questions, please contact your local Support office.

 

Also consider the possibility of rebuilding your Project in the new version of Citect. If you rebuild your Project, you can take advantage of all the newer objects, and you will not have any incompatibility problems, particularly if the project you are upgrading is from DOS Citect, or V1.x or V2.x. If rebuilding your system will take a week or less, you should really consider rebuilding the system, instead of upgrading it.

 

1. Backup all your existing projects.

2. Get a new Computer

3. Install NT 4.0 Workstation with Service Pack 6.

4. Install Citect V5.21

5. Install Latest Service Pack for Citect V5.21 (Currently Service Pack G)

6. Restore your first Project. (Included projects first)

7. Wait until the Project Editor Upgrade has finished.

8. Shutdown and Restart Citect Explorer.

9. Wait until the Graphics Builder Upgrade has finished

10. Shutdown and Restart the Citect Explorer.

11. Go into the Project Editor and Pack the Project

12. Go into the Graphics Builder and Pack the Graphics

13. Go into the Graphics Builder and turn off Fast Update Pages

14. Go into the Graphics Builder and Update Pages.

15. Go into the Project Editor and turn off Incremental Compile.

16. Compile the project.

17. Run the Project

18. Repeat for all Projects.

19. Once you have all Projects running, roll the new version into your existing plant.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1: Backup your files:

 

This section discusses the possible variations that you may have on your site, and how to find them and back them up.

 

 

 

Make sure you have at least 2 separate backups of your existing project in the original version, plus all other associated files and drivers. Put these on separate disks and put them in a safe place. You should then restore these backups onto a non-critical Citect PC to make sure they are OK. People often make Backups that are corrupted or do not work. This is a terrible situation to live through. You think that you are doing the right thing by backing up all your data, but because you have never tested the backup, you don’t realise that it will not work. Please test your backups before going any further.

Service Packs

If you have a current service pack loaded make sure you have a backup to reinstall this if you need to roll back to your current version of Citect later.

Check Driver Files

You may be using a unique or beta version of a device (board or protocol) driver. These may reside in the Citect “bin” folder. It is advisable to backup any such driver before continuing.

 

Check your project to see if it is using any new added in software that is not in the standard version of Citect. There are a lot of third party drivers and a few Citect drivers that are not bundled with the normal version of Citect (they are not on the Citect CD). These include RTU and DCS type drivers, example, DNP, Bailey, etc.

 

If you are using any of these drivers make sure you have copies of the drivers too. If the system you are now using is a 16bit version of Citect and you are using a driver like this, make sure that there is a corresponding 32 bit driver. Not all 16 bit drivers have been re-written to be 32 bit drivers, particularly drivers that were written for a specific site. Check this, it is very important. If there is no 32bit version of a driver, then check with Citect Support for any other possible methods of communication.

3rd party Software

Check to see if you are using any other third party configuration software. Some Siemens installations require libraries from Siemens. Citect P/L does not necessarily have the high skill level needed in configuring Siemens software that is required on proprietary systems.

 

Please make sure you have backups of everything necessary to get your communications going again. If you do not do this, you will end up in the position of not having a running system, and all of the involved parties will blame the other pieces of software and you will get nowhere.

Citect Include Project

If you have made changes to the Include project (bad move), either copy this info in to your project or create a backup of the include project as well. Remember, as you are upgrading to a later version of Citect the old Include project cannot be used so you will have to copy changes from the old Include project to the new Include project manually!

Citect.FRM file

Check if the ‘Citect.frm’ file, in the Citect\Bin folder has been modified. See Q1579

Others

Backup any other software that you think may in any way be associated with the functionality of your system.

 

 

2: Determine if the project will upgrade:

 

It is advisable to load the new version of Citect on to a different PC. Then restore your project into the new version of Citect. Do this by restoring one project at a time (if it has includes) then repeat for all projects. Start at the lowest level of include then work you way up the tree.

 

Remember that when upgrading from a version previous to version 5, that Citect will upgrade the project then also do an update of the graphics also. If the update fails then the graphics will not function correctly.

 

If you do not restore the Projects in the correct order, the Upgrade process will complain that it cannot find the projects that are necessary and things will go wrong.

NOTE: If you do not restore your original projects into the new installation and just point the new installation to the existing projects, it will not work! There are a lot of behind-the-scenes things going on during an upgrade (these change from one version to another) that must happen for a successful upgrade. These will only happen if you restore the project into your new installation.

Steps to Take.

 

 

1. Get a new PC that is not needed for the functioning of the Plant. This is not totally necessary, however if you do try and use a PC that is being used to run your plant, and something goes wrong, can you afford to have your plant in a non functioning state ? And if so how long can you wait for it to be fixed ? If you feel that your plant is important, please get a new, separate non critical PC to do this test on.

 

2. Format this PC. If you do not format the PC and start from a totally clean hard drive, how do you know what environment you are working in ? There may be any number of DLL’s and left over software that is on this PC. Uninstalling software does not always get rid of every module associated with the software. If you feel that this upgrade is important, please format the hard drive.

 

3. Install Windows NT 4.0 Workstation. Feel free to use the Server version, however be aware that this requires more effort to set up correctly, and is not worth the effort. NT Server is optimised for file and application serving and not for processing. Unless you are going to have to use NT Server for some reason, I would stick to NT Workstation. We do not recommend using Win 95 or Win 98 with Citect. These operating systems are designed for home use and not for professional / industrial installations. If you have no choice, and must use either Win 95 or Win 98, then Good Luck.

 

4. Install Service Pack 6 or 6a for Win NT. Install the complete Y2K version of the Service Pack. There are also many serious bugs that have been fixed in Service Pack 4 and above that will affect the functionality of NT.

 

5. Install Citect V5.21 using all default settings. Check to see that the Citect Explorer runs, and that you can see the Example project. You should Compile and run the Example Project in order to ascertain the complete functionality of your new installation.

 

6. Install Service Pack G for V5.21. This fixes all of the currently known runtime problems with V5.21. Do not try and do this upgrade without first applying this Service Pack, as it also fixes a problem with upgrading graphics pages from older versions of Citect that have corrupted objects in them.

 

7. Restore the project. If you have Included Projects in your system, then you need to restore the lowest level Included Project first. For example, if you have 3 Projects in your system. They are called Main, Sub1 and Sub2. Main Includes Sub1, and Sub1 includes Sub2. You then need to restore Sub2 first, then make sure everything works with it. The Restore Sub1 and make sure that everything works with it, then restore Main and make sure it works. Only restore 1 Project at a time. Make sure you run through steps 8 - 14 for each project you are restoring.

 

8. After the initial restore of your Project, the Project Editor will Upgrade all the configuration databases. This is only half way there. Wait until this is finished, then Exit the Citect Explorer. Start the Citect Explorer again, and the Graphics Builder will Upgrade all the Graphics. If you do NOT do this, your pages will be corrupted, buttons will be in the wrong place, Genies will be corrupted, nothing will work. Please make sure you do both of these steps.

 

9. Once you have done this you should now see if the project is OK. To do this make sure you have the Incremental Compile option turned OFF in the Project Editor, and also make sure that Fast Update Pages is turned off.

 

10. In the Project Editor, Pack the project.

 

11. In the Graphics Builder, Pack the Libraries.

 

12. In the Graphics Builder, Update the Pages.

 

13. Now in the Project Editor do a Compile. This will do a complete compile, and check everything.

 

14. If the project does not compile, or behave as it should, you may have other parts of the system that are needed to compile this project in one of your included projects, Therefore this project will not be able to compile. Now go back to step 8 and Restore the next project in your system.

 

Once you have done all your Projects, and verified their ability to Upgrade there are a couple of directions you may go in. This will be up to you, however the main aim is to always (ALWAYS) have the ability to roll back to your previous working version of Citect.

 

 

The first thing you should do is to make 2 backups of the Upgraded Projects. Do not overwrite the existing 2 backups you have of your old versions of the projects. Keep these, they are your fallback safety net.

 

3: Upgrading the Protection Key (Dongle):

 

From version 5.20 or later you will need a Sentinal ‘Super Pro’ key and will also need to program it to function with your new version of Citect. See Q1579.

Citect Version 5.20 or later requires an update to the Protection Key used for Citect software licensing. Upon starting Citect Runtime for the first time, you will be presented with a series of dialogs regarding updating your key. To update your Citect Protection Key, an Authorisation Code is required. To obtain this Authorisation Code, you should Log IN to MyCitect on the website http://www.citect.com/. The information required from you is:

· Key serial number

· Site Number

· Site Name

· Key ID

Citect P/L will return the Authorisation code that will need to be entered into the Sentinel Key.

Please be prepared to wait for at least 24 hours for the Authorisation code to be sent back to you.

If you do not have the Site ID or Site Name then you will need to register your Citect software. These are very important pieces of information, and Support will use them for logging all of your calls, without them you cannot get support. Please keep this information in a safe place.

NOTE: A separate program for updating the Citect Protection Key is also available for download from the Support Files\Citect\KeyUpdate area of our web sites;

http://www.citect.com/

Note: If you want to get the Authorisation codes for your keys you can run the program on an existing Citect System. You will have to shutdown Citect for a short period. Be Aware that each time you run the Program, you may or may not get a different Key ID returned to you. This is not a problem. The Authorisation Code will work for your Key. It is also possible that the Authorisation Code for two or more keys to be identical, very unlikely, but possible. Please try the Authorisation Codes sent to you, before you waste a lot of time trying to find out why you have two codes the same.

 

Previous versions of Citect will work fine with updated keys.

 

You should now be ready to roll the Upgraded System into operation in your Plant.

 

The safest way to do this is to install a whole new set of PC’s and leave your existing ones as they are. However, not many sites will have the resources to do this. The following instructions will step you through installing a new version of Citect onto a PC, without harming the existing version in any way. This is necessary, so that you have a fallback position.

 

 

 

 

 

4: Installing the new version of Citect onto an existing Citect PC.

4.1: Modify your existing Citect Version to enable a new install

 

It is quite easy to have two or more versions of Citect installed and useable on one PC. As you already have one version installed and working, we want to leave that alone as much as possible.

 

If you have a standard installation then your Citect will be installed in a directory structure like the following.

Directory Structure

C:\Citect - Bin

Data

User - Include

Example

System

IncV2

YourProject1

YourProject2

 

The User directory will contain a file called MASTER.DBF. This file is important and is used by the Citect configuration environment to determine the location of your projects.

 

Your Windows directory, usually C:\winnt, C:\win95, c:\windows, will contain a CITECT.INI file. This file is used by Citect for many different reasons. As the standard install of Citect will create a CITECT.INI file you should rename this file, so your new installation will not overwrite the existing CITECT.INI file.

 

TIP: There is a command line parameter that can be added to the shortcut that Citect uses when starting that will direct Citect to the INI file of your choice. You should rename your existing CITECT.INI file and then modify all the shortcuts for your existing installation. As an example of this we will rename our CITECT.INI to CITOLD.INI and leave it in the C:\WINNT directory. The Shortcuts for Citect should then be modified to be like this;

 

Citect Run Time: C:\CITECT\BIN\CITECT32.EXE /icitold.ini

Citect Explorer: C:\CITECT\BIN\CTEPLOR.EXE /icitold.ini

 

(This is documented fully in the Citect Knowledge Base, article Q1579)

 

Check to make sure your System still functions properly at this point. Make sure that the old Citect Explorer or Citect Project Editor still runs.

 

If you need a Citect service pack, this will backup existing files first into a “backup” folder and then install new files onto your system. Your directory structure will include a new folder for your old files: C:Citect\backup

You should also rename the Citect Program Folder to Citect Original Version.

 

4.2 Install new version of Citect:

 

You can now install your new version of Citect. During the Installation, you will be prompted for a directory to install Citect into. Do NOT install the new version into the default directory. This will overwrite your existing Citect installation, and you may as well go home. When the Setup program asks for a directory to Install Citect into, tell it to use C:\CIT520. When it asks for a Program Folder to use, tell it to use Citect V5.21. Install all other software and drivers required.

The Setup Program will create a new CITECT.INI file. You should now go through your existing INI file from your previous version and check to see if there are any non standard parameters that you had manually entered, or someone else had entered and copy them from your old INI file to you new INI file.

Now run the Computer Setup Wizard to ensure that you have all the correct options set for this particular Citect station. This will probably add a lot of new parameters to your INI file. Do not worry about this, as many of them are there now for the enhancements in the newer version.

 

You can now also go back and rename your new CITECT.INI and modify the shortcuts in your Program Folder to reflect the name of your new INI file.

 

You should now check that your new version of Citect is installed OK. To do this, run the Citect Explorer and check that you can see the Example Project. Compile this and run it and make sure that everything in there functions OK.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5. Integrating the New Version into your existing Plant.

 

You can now restore the already Upgraded versions of your Project that you made backups of before.

 

Go through the same procedures to ensure that the Projects are all OK, and then run your new version.

 

Once this Citect Station is running properly, you can slowly integrate it with the rest of your system. To do this you need to know what is different between Citect V5.2 and previous versions.

 

The I/O Server is compatible with all versions of Citect back to V1.2. Versions prior to V1.2 had a slightly different network protocol for the I/O Servers and are incompatible. This means that V1.0 and V1.1 and V1.11 will not co-exist and communicate with other versions of Citect.

 

The Alarm Server has a lot of added functionality compared to previous versions. A V5.2 Alarm Server can service requests from previous versions of Citect, but a V5.2 client will not be able to communicate with a pre V5.x Alarm server as the Client will be asking for additional information that was not available in the older versions.

 

The Trend Server has had some functionality added to it too. This is mainly the sub 1 second sampling rates. If your Project does not do this, then you should be OK mixing V5.2 (or later) Clients and Servers with your existing system. If you create some sub 1-second trends then your older Trend Servers will not be able to respond to these requests, and probably crash.

 

The Report Server has also had some extra redundancy and network functionality added to it. If you use a V5.2 client talking to an older Report Server it may crash. However if you have a V5.2 Report server it will be able to handle requests from older clients.

 

Once you are completely sure that everything is working, you can start to roll the rest of your plant over to the new version.

 

Please take advantage of the redundancy in Citect to ensure that your plant does not have to be shutdown at any time. You should be able to replace Servers with upgraded versions, one at a time until you have them all upgraded. Once you have them done, you can roll all of your Clients over to the newer version.

 

 

 

 

 

6. Finished

 

If everything went OK you should now have a fully functioning V5.21 Citect system. If it didn’t some common problems are listed in the Troubleshooting Section.

 

 

Trouble Shooting

General Tips

· Check out the white papers on the Citect Web page for other upgrade issues (Y2K).

· Read the Citect kbase articles – especially on upgrading from early versions or Citect.

Citect Knowledge Base

Some sample articles from the Knowledge Base. Check the Knowledge Base for any articles regarding your system. For example, if you are using some specific board based protocol, do a search on that driver. If you are using Dial Up Networking, do searches on RAS or DUN.

 

Known Pitfalls

1. ODBC

If the Citect Explorer refuses to run or gives you error messages when you try to start it, read the Knowledge Base articles and run the suggested fixes.

 

The best way to attack an ODBC error on starting up the Citect explorer is to get hold of the latest Citect V5.3x, 5.4x you can find. There is a folder on the CD-ROM named CitectDB”

 

Note: Have a copy of your operating system CD or disks handy as well, in case you have to re-install Windows or completely re-format your hard drive due to stubborn ODBC problems. This is the worst case scenario and should not normally be necessary.

2. Background or template files:

If the project is a V1 or 2 Citect project then some of the pages may be based on ‘template’ or ‘background’ files. After upgrading, some pages in your project appear to exist but in fact there are no .ctg or .ctf files for the individual pages. This can be rectified in the graphic builder, file open button, then select the page and open it, if it looks ok save the page. The .ctg and .ctf files now exist.

 

If a pop up is based on a template and you try to edit this (example edit a button) you will not be allowed to – it’s treated as a static symbol. To rectify this you must break the links on this page, thereby apparently losing all configuration! Now select all, then ungroup the objects on the page and all your objects can now be edited.

 

3. Trend Objects:

See Citect Knowledge Base article Q1579.

 

4. Keyboard commands.

In some previous versions you could to define the Enter key as Left Mouse Button, that then called KeyPut(“Enter”) to simulate the Enter Key when you click with the left mouse button. In the current version of Citect this is done for you on Button objects and if you have used this in your Project, you will now see two or more “Enter”s which will most likely cause you problems, possibly even crashes. You should re-configure Button objects to have the command on the Touch Input and this will automatically work if the user presses the Enter key.

 

5. Colour Floods.

In previous versions of Citect Colour Floods were used extensively. In the Current version of Citect, due to the nature of the Object based graphics, Colour Floods will probably cause you problems and you should replace them all to fill objects such as the rectangle, ellipse and polygon.

 

6. Cicode.

The Cicode Engine is now much more efficient, and will run your Cicode much faster. If you have some cicode that could possibly cause a problem, it definitely will now. You may have to do some re-writing of your Cicode. The V5.xx compiler will now attempt to compile ALL cicode functions in ALL libraries, regardless of whether you actually call those functions in your project. This can account for compile errors after upgrading from a previous version. It will require you to delete unused code or correct it syntactically.

 

7. Pages that start with “!” (hidden pages) do not upgrade.

There is a setting in the graphics builder, tools | options, Fast Update Pages. This is set as default and so the hidden pages will not update.

 

8. Chaining Animation of Digital Tags (Linking AN records).

If the project has text, symbols or colour animations linked together (if you use more than 3 variables and have linked multiple symbols together on the one AN point) this is no longer supported from V5.10 onwards. You will need to redraw the symbol set using V5 tools. See also Q1579 for more information.

 

9. Trend File Path.

Trend files cannot be in, or a subdirectory of the Citect Bin, Runtime, Backup or User directories. One reason is that from the Citect Explorer you do not see subdirectories and a simple delete project will also delete all customer data without question.

 

For example: Using [Run]:\Trends\filename Path Substitution for trend data results in an Error: Path:'[Run]:\Trends:cpu' not suitable for trend files.

 

10. Error: "Feature not supported", caused by one symbol library after upgrade.

The library can be opened in the graphics builder but cannot update pages/compile/pack library. Remove the library file, upgrade the project then replace the file into the project folder after citect has upgraded/updated the project.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Disclaimer

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