ABB Bugs and Wishlist

Well, the KUKA and Fanuc forums have a Bugs&Wishlist pinned thread, so why should ABB miss out on the fun?

To start things off, something minor but annoying: I love the RAPID editor in RobotStudio most of the time, and I make heavy use of the Format button. But that button has one odd behavior I really dislike: breaking inline comments off onto their own lines.

Everyone has their own opinion on inline comments -- that is, lines like this:

VAR num nCounter; ! Local Counter Variable

Now, everyone has their own opinion on inline comments. And there is an issue where using an inline comment can push the comment off the right edge of the FlexPendant screen (in fact, I've seen some programmers use that to conceal comments from people who don't understand the horizontal scroll). But the way the Format button handles them just gripes me.

Not only does hitting the Format button take anything after the ; and move it to a new line, it puts that new line after the original -- effectively, it just adds a Line Feed between the ; and the !.

Which has the effect of moving the inline comment after the line of code it was originally part of! Like this:

VAR num nCounter;

! Local Counter Variable

Which is just completely counterintuitive!

It would be nice if there was an option to have the Format button leave inline comments alone. And if that option is de-selected, the inline comment should wrap above the executable code, not below. Or heck, maybe make that an option too.

Quote from xVican

To be able to set a bit in a word simpler, in PLCs I usually use a word called nHandshake.

nHandshake.%X1 := TRUE;

Would make my mapping easier.

BitSet and BitClear would seem to be the functions you want?

Quote from Lemster68

Good morning everyone. I have been contacted by an ABB person seeking feedback on issues or possible improvements to the program editor of the IRC5 teach pendant. If you would like to contribute, your suggestions and input would be most welcome.

Hm... well, off the top of my head:

1. the double-tap problem. If I accidentally double-tap on the wrong thing in the Program Editor, I can often end up with a "doom bar" that takes as much as 20-30sec to clear, and renders the entire pendant unusable in the meantime.

2. The "group-pick" problem. Too often, I try to tap on a line, and somehow get the entire page (or more) highlighted. And then it's hard to find a safe spot to tap on to de-select that mass of lines -- often, most of the screen becomes an area where a single tap triggers the "doom bar" problem.

3. If I have the side menu open, I'd like to still have the page-up and page-down buttons. I realize that may create a screen crowding issue, but I often find myself closing the menu just to get the paging buttons back, then re-opening the side menu.

4. The Jog screen. Okay, this isn't the editor, but it's a pet peeve: I can't change between seeing Cartesian or Joint values without changing my jog mode. Far too often, I want to watch Joint angles while jogging in Cartesian, or vice-versa.

5. Program Data Scrren: I'd like to have smarter filtering (wildcards especially), and a "favorites" option like the I/O screen does.

For filtering, being able to make visible Station1_Count, Station2_Count, and so on visible together, without everything that starts with "Station", would be nice. Or maybe just all the variables with "Count" in the name.

For favorites, it would be nice to be able to see a set of variables of different types -- like, a set of pallet counters, and the Wobjs those counters offset -- at the same time, without needling to flip back to the Data Type screen constantly.

Oh, and better refresh! Often, I check a variable in the Data screen, flip to the Editor and run a few lines of code, then flip back to the Data screen... and find either my Data page has reset to the top, or the refresh of the variable values takes several seconds.

6. Line wrapping. In RobotStudio, I can wrap a long line of code to fit into the pendant screen width, but I haven't found a way to do that on the pendant.

7. semi-random selection. I often tap on a multi-argument line like a MoveJ, but if I get just a particular argument highlighted, or the entire line, seems to be a crapshoot. To be fair, I'm usually running the editor at the smallest font size in order to maximize my visible line count.

8. General pendant overall: speed of response. I constantly feel like I'm trying to Run Windows 10 on a computer built for Windows 95. It's not terrible, but you can feel that the pendant software is hitting the limits of the hardware.

Quote from Lemster68

Would you please add, If you can check right now, or remember what version of robotware these things are acting like such. I, myself, have the opinion that the newer robotware versions are becoming less stable, with regards to the pendant.

I've seen this on RW 6.12 and 6.13. Probably also 6.11, but I can't swear to it.

Quote from saberlars

Teaching-Pendant's response speed need to be faster.

It's frustrating because it's slow switch pages.

So, the newest version of the pendant (much flatter, almost like a tablet with buttons attached) appears to be much snappier, based on my brief tryout of it. So they have made progress on that front.