Software Toolbox Technical Blog

New 2019 Automation & Control Software Learning Resources

4 min read

By Kevin Rutherford on Jan 22, 2019 2:00:00 PM


The New Year is a time of renewal, new projects, new challenges, and for some of you, new roles, or new people on your teams.

In this blog post, we provide a quick reference to resources from the past year that should be helpful to you and your colleagues.  If you aren't already subscribed to our blog, we encourage you to subscribe. We publish new content about once a week, sometimes more often, and you can control when you are notified about new content.

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Tech Support Corner: Answers to Your Questions about TOP Server OS and Version Support

5 min read

By Kevin O'Connor on Dec 20, 2018 2:00:00 PM


The technical support team here at Software Toolbox maintains an extensive knowledge base built from answers to all of your questions from over the years.  Each month, we like to review which of our knowledge base articles have been used the most to see what users like you need help with.

With our monthly series called “Tech Support Corner”, we will bring you those most popular answers with additional helpful details and tips.  This month’s blog post covers the ins and outs of TOP Server operating system support by version, including how to identify your support/maintenance expiration, the importance of applying support/maintenance renewals and more.

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Key TOP Server V6.6 Features to Be Excited About

5 min read

By Kevin Rutherford on Nov 15, 2018 2:00:00 PM


If you haven't received one of my emails or heard from a colleague about our latest TOP Server release, you may not have heard about the key new features in TOP Server V6.6.

In this post, I'm going to go through some of the key features released in V6.6 in more detail, including further security enhancements, a new EUROMAP 63 driver, enhanced CNC machine access, telemetry performance, and how they benefit you as a TOP Server user.

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Demystifying Modbus Register Addressing with TOP Server for AVEVA

7 min read

By Kevin Rutherford on Oct 11, 2018 2:00:00 PM


I'm sure you've all at least had some interaction with Modbus, working in the automation industry.  It's one of the most widely used protocols (if not the most widely used) in the world.  Which is both its blessing and its curse, to some extent.

Given how long Modbus has been around and in use as an "open" protocol (starting in 1979), there have been many different interpretations of Modbus throughout the years.  And with those different Modbus interpretations, much confusion about the different terminology for accessing data.

In this blog post, I will step through the basics of Modbus addressing including how offsets come into play, and how they affect what addresses to use in TOP Server for AVEVA applications.

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Comprehensive EFM Data Collection and Export for PGAS, Flow-Cal, CSV & Database

5 min read

By John Weber on Sep 27, 2018 2:00:00 PM


If you're reading this post, you're more than likely working in the oil and gas industry, and you probably have flow computers and devices from different vendors storing historical EFM (Electronic Flow Measurement) data.  And, if your company is anything like the other companies in that industry, you use that EFM data for analysis, custody transfer and production optimization using one of the common EFM flow measurement analysis packages such as Flow-Cal, Quorum PGAS or even CSV or SQL.

In this blog post, I'll cover the video how-to resources available to help you get started using our EFM Suite for TOP Server to poll and export collected EFM data from various flow computers for Wonderware applications.

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Video Tutorial: EFM Export for Flow-Cal, PGas, Generic CSV & Database

2 min read

By John Weber on Sep 6, 2018 2:00:00 PM


If you're in the oil and gas industry, you're aware that, flow computers and devices from different vendors store historical EFM (Electronic Flow Measurement) data that is used for analysis, custody transfer and production optimization.  To that end, oil and gas companies use several EFM flow measurement analysis packages such as Flow-Cal, Quorum PGAS or even CSV or SQL to store and analyze that collected EFM data.

In this video blog, I'll show you how to get started using our EFM Exporter plug-in for TOP Server to poll and export collected EFM data from various flow computers for Wonderware applications.

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Namibia Brewing – Enterprise Data Integration Update & Award

3 min read

By John Weber on Aug 16, 2018 2:00:00 PM


Earlier this year, we shared the story of how Namibia Breweries Ltd is using off-the-shelf open OPC software in their operations management system.  In that story, we shared how we had learned making beer in one of the world’s driest places takes some unique approaches to power sourcing, water management, and really all resources.

We visited with Namibia Brewing again recently when they attended the X-Change 2018 conference in the beautiful Central Drakensberg region of South Africa.   I had the chance to sit down with Annemarie Kruger, Renaldo Du Pisani, and Andre Engelbrecht and, in this blog post, you'll learn about how they have continued to evolve their system since I visited their site in 2017.

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Video Tutorial: EFM Collection for OMNI Flow Computers

1 min read

By Kevin Rutherford on Aug 9, 2018 2:00:00 PM


If you're reading this, you're probably aware that, in the oil and gas industry, flow computers and devices from different vendors store historical EFM (Electronic Flow Measurement) data that is used for analysis, custody transfer and production optimization.  OMNI Flow computers are frequently used EFM devices for both gas and liquid EFM applications.

In this video blog, I'll show you how to get started using our OMNI Flow Computer driver to connect and gather real-time and EFM data from OMNI Flow Computers for Wonderware applications.

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