Which Automation Studio are you using?

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1

Hey community

AS6 was released a few months ago, and I’m curious:

How many in the community have already migrated a project to AS6 or are using it regularly?

  • We’ve delivered products based on AS6 that are already in production
  • We’ve migrated at least one project to AS6, but are still in development
  • We haven’t started working with AS6 yet
0 voters

Feel free to comment with your experiences, challenges, or reasons why someone should (or shouldn’t) update to AS6 at this stage.

Can’t wait to see the results:-)

Cheers
Christoph

3

I migrated a project to AS6.1, but I’m very disappointed. Tons of issues (e.g., searching in files and then jumping to the found location often leads to errors), things that no longer work (e.g., adding an object in the Logical View is gone), and the installation itself is horrible.

4

Thanks for sharing your experience. I recently migrated a pretty complex project to AS6.1 as well. Luckily, the installation went smoothly for me, and I don’t miss “add objects” since I’ve been using the Toolbox on the right-hand side for a while now.

That said, I agree there are still some rough edges that affect the workflow. Hopefully, B&R will address these in upcoming releases.

Our biggest migration challenges were:

  1. Interface changes in AsOpcUac (documented, but still a hassle)
  2. “Security by Default” — took quite a bit of trial and error to get all communications (OPC UA, FTP(S), MappView, Safety-Commissioning, SDM etc.) working again
  3. mpAlarmX didn’t migrate cleanly
  4. Some unexpected widget behavior changes in mappView, especially with Event-Actions

Despite the issues, I’d say AS6 is on a solid path overall. Especially compared to earlier major updates or competitors.

5

Automation Studio 6 is new, https://community.br-automation.com/t/b-r-automation-studio-6-features/2979. A lot of things were removed from it or changed compared to AS4. That is why you have to really follow the instructions on how to migrate your project, and even with this, you might still face issues. With the newer version, most of these problems have been resolved. If you are facing issues, support should help you.

6

It is clear that a migration needs to take place, and I have followed the instructions from B&R. Implementing the code itself was not really a problem either. The errors I am referring to also affect projects that are created directly in AS6 and not migrated. You are talking about a newer version that fixes many errors. Currently, only version 6.1.1.14 is available for download; is this the version you mean? I’ve been using it since the beginning.

  • Installation problems (for all colleagues)
  • Compilation problems with C tasks, every time it needs to be cleaned before compiling
  • Deleting referenced files is often unsuccessful, it must then be done manually in ANSI.prg
  • No insertion of new tasks possible via right-click (still possible in Physical View)
  • Searching in files → Jumping to the found location often leads to errors
  • Search function → Auto-completion function automatically capitalizes search terms, even though it is not wanted
  • etc., etc., etc.

B&R Support says we need to wait for AS6.3. We hope that at least these errors will be fixed by then.

1 Like
7

I can confirm that AS6.3 will include lot of bug fixes.

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8

When is the release of AS6.3?

9

I think release period is every half a year. So next one should be in June.

10

I’m looking forward to the Automation Studio Code. There are improvements with the update to Automation Studio 6, but Automation Studio 6 is still slow. :sob: (And old GUI, Unicode issue)

For me, the development experience in AS6 is not good compared to competitors who use Visual Studio Shell or Eclipse Shell. I use AS6 when I design mappView, and I use Visual Studio Code for program development.

Automation Studio Code is an officially supported code editor by B&R, I expect it to provide better compatibility than VSCode. :slight_smile:

2 Likes