Step 0 - 4diac IDE Overview

This page is part of a guide that gives a walkthrough over the major 4diac IDE features.

  1. Overview (YOU ARE HERE!)
  2. Use 4DIAC locally
  3. Create a distributed application
  4. Deploy remotely
  5. Create your own Function Blocks
  6. Other basic features
  7. Advanced Features [optional]

In this Step 0, it's presented an overview about Elements, Perspectives and Properties of 4diac IDE that you need to know for a smoother use of it.

Starting up 4diac IDE

To start the tutorial open 4diac IDE. You will be prompted to select or create your workspace. For this tutorial we name our workspace "Tutorial". A workspace is a folder on your computer to store one or more 4diac projects.

workspace selection

After you created a workspace 4diac IDE presents its welcome screen. Here you can get an overview about 4diac, create a new project, import an existing project or you can read more about the chapters of the tutorial.

welcome screen of 4diac IDE

At first it's best to unselect the checkbox so you can start up 4diac faster the next time.

Next you click at the workbench button. This brings you to the main screen of 4diac IDE.

4diac IDE Elements

Since 4diac is compliant to the IEC 61499 standard, 4diac IDE provides the standard's elements for work (you can check here to rememeber the elements):

4diac IDE Perspectives

The 4diac IDE provides three perspectives, which can be added by the add perspective button in the upper right corner:

perspective selection
  1. System Perspective Button System perspective is used to configure everything regarding your system. It includes:
  2. Deployment Perspective Button Deployment perspective where the Applications are launched and tested
  3. Debug Perspective Button 4diac Debug perspective where Applications can be monitored

System Perspective

In the right upper corner the perspective can be changed. The System perspective is reached by the System Perspective Button button. The System perspective is divided into the following five areas.

  1. System Management area, which is used for the management of IEC 61499 compliant applications and to configure Devices and Resources. In a tab next to it, there's the Type Navigator, which lists the available function block library for every System as well as the default library.
  2. Editor area, which contains the Application editor for modeling of control applications, the System editor for modeling the System configuration, and the Device and Resource editor for modeling the Resource configuration
  3. Outline of Applications, System configurations, Devices, and Resources
  4. Property view, which allows the parameterization of function block instances, Devices, and Resources

System Perspective Button

Deployment Perspective

In the right upper corner the perspective can be changed. The Deployment perspective is reached by the Deployment Perspective Button button. The Deployment Management perspective is divided into the following four areas.

  1. Download Selection for the selection of a System, Devices or Resources which have to be deployed to controller runtimes
  2. Visualization of download messages
  3. Runtime Launcher and Download Button which start the deployment process and launch IEC 61499 compliant runtimes
  4. Console output in case the runtime is running locally

Deployment Perspective Button

Debug Perspective

In the right upper corner the perspective can be changed. The Debug perspective is reached by the Debug Perspective Button button. The Debug perspective is divided into the following five areas.

  1. System selection where Systems can be marked for monitoring with right click and choosing Monitor System
  2. Application editor which shows your Application and highlights the variables marked for watching
  3. Watches view which allow to watch the actual values of the variables you marked for watching
  4. Outline

Debug Perspective Button

4diac IDE Preferences

Before starting with the engineering process of IEC 61499 Applications, you should set the preferences for the 4diac IDE under Window → Preferences → 4DIAC.

Later in Step 1 - Use 4diac IDE locally you learn more about the preferences. For now it’s good to know there are different preference pages where various parameter settings for the 4diac IDE can be made, like different colors or connection routers. In order to use the Runtime Launcher of the deployment perspective the location of the run executable files must be set in the properties. Currently 2 runtime envirements are supported.

  1. 4diac Forte: path/forte.exe
  2. Holobloc’s FBRT: path/fbrt.jar
4DIAC IDE Preferences

Toolbar

Selecting an element (e.g. Systems, Devices, Resources, Applications, Function Blocks, ...) and pressing the right mouse button opens the context menu with several menus to manipulate the specific element. The following general toolbar items are provided:

Where to go from here?

Now that you had an overlook about the major things about 4diac IDE, you can start using it:

Step 1 - Use 4diac IDE locally

If you want to go back to the Start Here page, we leave you here a fast access

Start Here page

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