Create project

Create a new project

Click on the push button "new project" in the Project Administrator panel to create a new project. Only an empty directory structure is created for a new project. Required files from the config / directory and the database from db/WinCC OA are used to create the new project. When registering projects (new created projects are registered automatically) project information like project name, project directory, version and user is written to the file pvssInst.conf. Under Windows this file is located under C:\ProgramData\Siemens\WinCC_OA and under Linux the file is located under /etc/opt/wincc_oa. The path of the file can be overwritten via environment variable PVSS_II_ROOT (only for Linux). Since the version path is included in the file it is not necessary to set the environment variables.

Following notes and warnings must be considered when creating a new WinCC OA project:

Note: A configuration where several WinCC OA projects are running on the same computer is unfavorable and thus not recommended. Note that you bear the responsibility for several WinCC OA projects running on the same computer.
Note: When creating a new project the database is regenerated by the program WCCOAtoolCreateDb.

Selecting project type

Figure 1. Selecting project type

Choose the project type. You can choose between the following options:

  • Standard Project
  • Legacy Standard Project
  • Remote UI Project
  • Redundant Project
  • Distributed Project
  • Remote driver project

  • Enter a name for the project, select the project languages and select a directory where the project should be saved. The check box "pwd protected" is checked by default. Enter a Pmon user and a password. The Pmon user can be any user. You can enter one user per project. The user is used for the project administration. If you enter a user, the project cannot be started without the user and the password. These are queried before the project start.

General Settings

  • In the project name field you can give the new project a name.
    Note:

    Note that when defining the name of a project you may only use the 7-bit-ASCII character set. In addition, the name must not contain any blanks or the following characters: / \ ? < > * | ; : " '.

    It is not allowed to use names similar to version numbers, e.g. "3.9" because these names lead to errors during the project creation.

  • Select the a desired language:

    You can also select several project languages. For more information please refer to create a new multilingual project.

    Note: For historical reasons older panels and scripts are coded after ISO standard. Should these be opened and stored in a project using UTF-8 coding, special characters, for example German umlauts, are not displayed correctly.
  • Specify the project path (the target directory) either by entering the path manually or by clicking on the push button with the folder symbol.In the selected folder a new directory with the project name is created.

    Only characters from 7-bit-ASCII character set may be used in the project path. Blanks are not allowed. Both forward and backward slash (/ and \) can only be used to separate the name of directories.

    The following characters besides blanks are not allowed in the project path, either:

    • Umlaut ("ä","ö", "ü") - cause problems during online backup
    • Dollar sign ($)
    • At sign (@)
    • Angle brackets (< >), brackets ([ ]), braces ({ }) and round brackets (( ))
    • Colon (:) and semicolon (;)
    • Equal sign (=)
    • Circumflex sign (^)
    • Vertical bar (|)
    • Asterisk (*)
    • Exclamation mark (!)
    • Percent sign (%)
    • Question mark (?)
    • Comma (,)
    • Quote sign (single and double) (' ")
    • Tabulator blank

If you have not specified a drive for the project path under Windows, the drive where WinCC OA is installed will be used.

The check box Runnable defines whether the project can be started. This means that all directories and files for proper operation have to exist. A sub project (e.g. info server) would not be executable alone. The directory .../db/wincc_oa/ in the directory structure as well as a config file (.../config/config) have to exist in order to run a project.

You can also assign a user and a password to the project. This authentication is, however, not connected with the WinCC OA users or with the users of the operating system. If the settings of a project are changed, a project is started, stopped, etc. the user and the password are requested. A user and a password have to exist for the authentication if you want to administer the project remote (e.g. via HTTP in a web browser). Activate the check box Pwd-protected in order to assign a user and a password to the project. The user and the encrypted password are saved in the progs file. (see also Functionality of the Pmon).

Use NGA creates an NGA project. For more information, see chapter NextGen Archiver (NGA).

Creating new project

Figure 2. Overview

As the next step, you will be shown an overview of all selected options.

  • This panels also shows the selection of the used Icon Theme for the project.
  • After choosing an Icon Theme, click OK and your project will be generated.

No other settings can be created when the project is created. When the project is created the list of the projects is updated in the project administrator panel and the new created project is selected automatically.

After creating the project you can assign a user and a password to the project via the Change project properties panel in order to prevent an unauthorized access.