Navigation guide

This documentation is for PcVue 17.0.

There is more to the documentation than meets the eye. This topic gives an overview of the conventions used in this documentation as well as the powerful search tools you can use to find the information you need.

The documentation contains information that helps you navigate the product installation, configuration, deployment, and troubleshooting. It includes explanation about the HMI workspace, the Application Explorer, the Application Architect, the Smart Generators, SCADA Basic scripting, and deployment tools.

It also contains detailed information about the Add-ons and the reference for those VBA instructions that are specific to PcVue.

The Microsoft VBA reference help is integrated in the VBA environment and can be displayed using function key F1 when the VBA Editor is open.
The technical resources for PcVue SDK & API are available separately when you choose to install them.

Style conventions used in this documentation

A bulleted list is used for a list of items that have no particular order, and for lists of tab options:

Item x
Item y
Item z

A numbered list is used for a list of items that have a particular order, such as steps to achieve a task:

First item
Second item
Third item

Text in a mono-spaced font and with a background color is used for
file fragments and data lists.

Show picture indicates a place where you can click to display a picture about the topic.

The following icons are used for notes, warnings and tips:

A note usually includes additional details or a recommendation that is good to consider.

A warning alerts you of a potential issue, hazard, or risk if proper precautions are not taken. It must be observed.

A tip is a short, practical piece of advice meant to help you do something more easily, efficiently, or effectively.

It sometimes turns itself into a trick, a shortcut, workaround, or hack that solves a problem in a smart or unconventional way.

The following table describes the notation used to document the syntax of Command Line Interface tools:

Notation	Description
`Text without brackets or braces`	Element you must type as shown.
`<Text inside angle brackets>`	Placeholder for which you must supply a value. It is usually required to be passed as argument but may also be prompted if necessary.
`[Text inside square brackets]`	Optional element.
Vertical bar (`\|`)	Separator for mutually exclusive elements. You must choose one.

Well-known folders are designated as follow:

The Program folder - It is the base directory where executable and dll files are installed. It is also where data files that should only be modified by users with Administrative privileges are stored.
Defaults to C:\Program Files\ARC Informatique\PcVue 17\
The Application data folder or App data folder - It is the base folder for projects and their data, data common to all projects (including shared and common libraries), and data generated by the application when running (including log files and dumps).
Defaults to C:\ProgramData\ARC Informatique\PcVue 17\
Project folder - Your projects are stored in the \usr directory of the Application data folder.
Defaults to C:\ProgramData\ARC Informatique\PcVue 17\usr\
Examples of project folders in this documentation are C:\ProgramData\ARC Informatique\PcVue 17\usr\MyProject if considering the default App data folder, or C:\SV\Data\usr\MyProject if considering that the App data folder is customized.

The Program folder and the App data folder can be customized at installation time.

The App data folder can also be changed after installation using the Host Deployment Console or the svcmd CLI tool.

The contents panel

The Contents panel on the left side offers a hierarchical view of sub-books and topics. Each sub-book relates to either a workflow such as Installation or to a product feature such as the Application Explorer.

Feel free to drill-down to find the sub-book and topics relevant to what you are looking for.

Basic search features

The documentation system offers a full-text search engine, you can use letters and numbers in the search query. The letters are not case-sensitive. Punctuation marks are ignored except when within quotations. However, you cannot search for quotation marks. Search also matches terms in the glossary and in the index.

The search results page displays the list of topics relevant to your search query. It includes:

A search heading with an indication of the number of results.
A list of results with a link to the topic, the first sentences of the topic with matching keywords highlighted and the topic path.
A search footer to help you navigate the results if multiple result pages are available.

The search engine supports partial word matching. Similar to simple text search, it allows you to search for partial-word and number strings. The search engine matches variant endings. It will find topics with words that match a keyword or only differ in having a commonly used suffix. For example, if you enter 'add' as the search query, the search engine will match 'added' or 'adding' but not 'additive'. Since matches are not case-sensitive, the results will also include topics containing matches such as "Added" and "Adding".

Contrary to Microsoft help systems, wildcards such as the question mark (?) and asterisk (*) are not supported by the documentation system search feature.

The search engine includes a list of stop words to filter out common structure-class words (i.e., function words) from search operations. This means the search engine excludes words (e.g., "an," "for," "of," and "the") by default. Search will not find matches for queries containing stop words in quotes. For example, if you search for the phrase "Pets are fun," search will only include topics with the words "pets" and "fun." This is because the word "are" is part of the stop word list.

Advanced search features

Logical search expressions

The logical operators AND, OR and ^ enable you to define your search precisely by relating several search terms.

Logical search expressions are evaluated left to right unless they contain parentheses (see below). The following table shows how you can use each of these operators.

To search for	Example	Topics containing
Both terms in the same topic	alarm AND #t	Both words 'alarm' and '#t'. The symbol plus (+) and ampersand (&) can also be used. When separating keywords with a space, the AND is always inferred by the search engine.
Either term in a topic	alarm OR #t	The word 'alarm' or the word '#t' or both. The symbol (\|) can also be used.
The first term without the second term	alarm ^ #t	The word 'alarm' but not the word '#t'.

Contrary to Microsoft help systems, operators NOT and NEAR are not supported.

Nested expressions

Nested expressions use parentheses '(...)' to construct complex searches.

The basic rules for searching help topics using nested expressions are as follows:

The expressions in parentheses are evaluated before the rest of the query.
The query is then evaluated from left to right.
You cannot nest expressions more than five levels deep, e.g., '(level_1...(level_2...(level_3...(level_4...(level_5...)))))'.

Example	Operators	Topics containing
alarm AND (display OR window)	'AND', 'OR'	The word 'alarm' along with the words 'display' or the word 'alarm'.