Importing and Exporting Operations

Importing and exporting operations can be performed on Driver's Operations tab, by clicking Import Configuration or Export Configuration, as shown on the next figure.

Options for importing and exporting operations

These options allow importing and exporting operation configurations displayed on Modbus Operations frame to INI files.

On this Driver's versions previous to 2.00, operation configurations were performed on a modbus.ini file, which was loaded during Driver's initialization. modbus.ini files of these old versions still can be loaded on the current Driver version, by using the import option.

Importing

Importing configuration files is very simple. Click Import Configuration and select an INI file. The Driver must load operation configurations, which immediately appear on Modbus Operations frame. This Driver allows importing files generated on previous versions.

Exporting

Exporting files with operation configurations can be performed to share the same operation configurations among different Driver objects, as well as performing backup copies of operation configurations of a certain device.

Another possible use is exporting configurations to a modbus.ini file compatible with previous Driver versions, allowing to load these configurations on previous versions. This is not advisable but, if inevitable in case of legacy applications, users must consider the following situations.

When clicking Export Configuration, a window with two options is then opened, as in the following figure.

Export options

On this window, users must select between exporting based on the new format (New format with type mnemonics), with displayed data types defined as Strings (mnemonics), or based on the old format (Old format with types' numeric codes), in which data types were identified by a numerical value, corresponding to the position where they appeared on the combo box Data on Operations tab.

This new format is more legible, making it easy to debug, and is used on the most recent versions of this Driver, and it is the most recommended option.

The old format, on the other hand, must be selected only if it is indispensable to export for versions previous to version 2.08 of this Driver.

Notice that, to export modbus.ini files successfully to load them to versions previous to 2.00, operations cannot define any new data type not implemented on the destination version, nor define operations that use the Use bit mask parameter, or the import operation may fail.

Generally, it is recommended to avoid exporting configurations to previous versions, preferring updated Driver versions.