Multi-monitor support at a glance

Purpose

This topic explains in general terms how multiple screens are set up in the Definition program and how the configuration will look to the operator during supervision. Note that this is a general description. For detailed procedures, refer to the Scenario of use topic or the "How To…" book in the Table of Contents.

Setting up the number of screens and resolution

The first thing to do is to specify the number of screens and the screen resolution. You simply specify the number of screens horizontally and vertically. The screens must be placed in a rectangular setup, which means that if you set up 2 horizontal screens and 2 vertical screens, you're configuring for an operator station with four screens placed in two stacks of two screens.

The screen resolution must be the same on all screens connected to the operator station. But the smart thing here is that IGSS allows you to set up for a lower screen resolution than the one you have on the system designer's machine. So, if you're configuring for four 600x800 operator stations, you can easily do it on a PC running 1024x724 or 1280x1024.

The picture below shows you the Multi-Screen Setup dialog box accessed from the Format menu in the Definition program. This is where you define all the basic settings for the multi-screen setup.

$images\Multi-Screen_Setup.gif$

Scroll bar and grid behaviour

Notice the possibilities in the lower part of the dialog box. They allow you to determine how you want the scroll bars to behave when you're running the configuration on a single screen (an operator station with only one screen) or on multiple screens (an operator station with multiple screens connected). In a multi-user environment, you would typically have a mix of the two types. On a single screen, you can activate the scroll bars or you can scale or cut the multiple screens to fit the current screen. Another option is also to use the Pan function.

The Handle as Single Screen option allows users to treat multi monitors as a single screen, hence the Single screen options are valid. This could be used, if a 5 screen display has been defined, but only 2 monitors are available, then the four options in Single screen may be used to control scroll bars and work space.

The Show grid option allows you to show a grid that clearly shows the screen boundaries. During the initial setup, you would typically enable it both in the Definition and the Supervise programs and later you can disable it for the Supervise program so as not to confuse the operator with the screen boundaries.

The Scale all diagrams to fit on primary screen is not a dynamic function, but can be used when a configuration is expanded to two or more monitors. If any diagram(s) has been set to full screen it would normally, after adding more monitors, be scaled to fit the whole work space. However if this checkbox is selected (always as default), the diagram(s) will be scaled only to fit on the primary screen.

Position the diagrams

Using the settings shown in the above picture, we will then continue with the actual positioning of the process diagrams in the Definition program. Because we've enabled the grid, we will see the following screen:

$images\Multi-Screen_Grid.gif$

We can now start positioning the diagrams on the individual screens. This is done simply by opening a diagram and then resizing it to fit one of the slots, each representing a screen. In the example below, two out of the four diagrams have been positioned.

$images\Multi-Screen_Positioning.gif$

Install and run the configuration

The configuration is now ready for installation. If you want to position the Alarm List on one of the screens, you would do this from the Supervise program. Refer to the "Scenario of Use" topic for details.