FOREGROUND PROGRAM | CNCNETPDM MANUAL

This section describes the steps to start CNCnetPDM as a foreground program.

After extracting the files it is possible and save to immediately start CNCnetPDM. By default CNCnetPDM starts its output modules in ‘offline-mode’ means that it does not automatically start it's MTConnect Adapter or OPC UA Server and doesn't try to establish a connection to a database. It is recommended to make yourself familiar with the parameters used by CNCnetPDM, see chapter ‘CONFIGURE CNCNETPDM.INI’:

Double click on CNCnetPDM opens a dialog:

FIG 1: Initial dialog of CNCnetPDM

Initially in section Service server (1) is set to ‘Local System’ (this PC), no instance for CNCnetPDM is defined (2), state is ‘not installed’. The second section 'Thread' allows to run CNCnetPDM as a user program in foreground under your user account instead of a background service. It is recommended to initially start CNCnetPDM in this mode. If you click on ‘Start Thread’ CNCnetPDM performs some actions on your PC:

CNCnetPDM automatically creates INI file CNCnetPDM.ini with default settings that are save known to work. In chapter ‘CONFIGURE CNCNETPDM.INI’ you can find everything you need to know about configuring CNCnetPDM according to your needs. CNCnetPDM also automatically creates file connect.udl which enables you to setup a database connection see chapter ‘DATABASE CONNECTIVITY’ for details.

Subfolder ‘log’ is also created under the folder where you extracted the program. It contains the log files written by CNCnetPDM. Folder name and location can be adjusted in CNCnetPDM.ini. With one device (Device number = 1000) the following files are written (YYMMDD = actual year, month and day):

FILE NAME	DESCRIPTION
log_1000_YYMMDD.txt	Device specific messages, one per device, device number is taken from section [RS232] in CNCnetPDM.ini
log_admin_YYMMDD.txt	Messages from administration service e.g. high water mark reached
log_db_YYMMDD.txt	Database related messages, e.g. connection succeeded, failed, insert errors
log_file_YYMMDD.txt	Messages about writing data to offline-text-files if database goes down
log_mtc_YYMMDD.txt	Messages related to communication with your application via the MTConnect interface of CNCnetPDM
log_master_YYMMDD.txt	Messages from the main service about devices, instance, license and threads started by CNCnetPDM
log_readfile_YYMMDD.txt	Messages about offline-text-files written to the database
log_ua_YYMMDD.txt	Messages related to activities of CNCnetPDM's OPC UA Server

FIG 2: Log files of CNCnetPDM

Subfolder ‘offline’ is also created. In case you do not use a database or your database cannot be reached or goes down all data from devices can be written into offline-text-files created by CNCnetPDM in this folder. Location and name of offline-text-files can be configured in CNCnetPDM.ini. Data from offline-text-files can be written to the database after database connectivity is established or the database is up again. Initially the file is named offline + number of offline file written.txt.

In configuration file CNCnetPDM.ini 4 entries are automatically added:

In section [GENERAL] License = license number is created. Initially this is a demo license. The only limitation of this license type is that device drivers other that device.dll output a restricted number of items. See section LICENSING for more details.

Section [Connect] gets an additional entry UDL_DATEI which points to the .udl file connect.udl that can be configured with information about your database connection. You can create different .udl files with different names for different databases. Please make sure that only one of them is active in CNCnetPDM.ini at a time. Inactive .udl files can be commented out by a prefixed semicolon ‘;’.

In section [Offline] entry FILENAME is created. This entry points to the folder and file name that should be used for offline-text-files. You can change that according to your needs. Please make sure that you always specify folder AND file name in this case.

After starting CNCnetPDM as a program field State shows ‘Running’ and the ‘Stop Thread’ button becomes active. Clicking on ‘Stop Thread’ stops the program. Clicking on button ‘Close’ also stops the program and closes the dialog.