SYSTEM ENABLING CONTROL INFORMATION DISPLAY FORMAT CHANGES DURING ON-LINE CONTROL OF A PLANT OR PROCESS

摘要

A method and apparatus for operating a plant while generating a display that contains information relating to the plant, and that can be changed in format during plant operation without adversely affecting the plant operation, the display being composed of a display format and a readable representation of the value of at least one selected parameter of the process (8), the representation having a defined position in the display, by: providing a first database (2) containing information defining the display format and identifying the selected parameter of the process (8); providing a second database (4) in the form of a memory having a plurality of addressable locations, with one of the locations being associated with the selected parameter; storing a representation of the value of the selected parameter in the second database (4) memory location associated with the selected parameter; retrieving (16) from the second database (4) the representation of the value stored in the location associated with the selected parameter; and combining (18) the information defining the display format with the representation retrieved in the retrieving step and using the combined information and representation to generate the display.