Having DA 4, DA 5 and DA X on the same computer

It is possible to install DA X on a 64-bit system that has DA5 and/or DA4.

You can only run one version of the DA runtime environment at a time. Use the DA X RuntimeManager utility to select which one is active. Access the utility from the MIL Control Center, Matrox DA X section. Note: See Industrial Communication Protocols section for information on using Profinet on computers that have both runtimes installed on them.

Upgrading Projects from DA 5

Make a backup of the entire project folder before upgrading a project.

Most required changes are done automatically during the upgrade when opening the project in Design Assistant.

Changes requiring Action

Industrial Communication Protocols

DA 5 projects will upgrade automatically to DA X. There have been changes to all the MilConfig Industrial communication pages to accommodate multiple instances of a protocol, one per network interface. Please refer to the “Introduction to Design Assistant X.pdf” document or the User Guide for information on creating and naming an instance of the protocol.

In the Platform Configuration dialog of your upgraded project, select an Instance from the droplist to ensure that the name of the protocol instance corresponds to an enabled instance in MilConfig.

DA 4 or earlier: There were major changes in industrial communication protocols between DA 4 and DA5. If you are working with a DA 4 project, make sure you refer to the Upgrading Projects from DA 4 to DA 5 document.

Ethernet/IP

OMRON users – note that the EDS file has been changed. Please use the following C:\Program Files\Matrox Imaging\MIL\Config\EthernetIP\ MATROX_2_0.eds

Profinet

Profinet support in DA X requires an interface that provides hardware-assisted Profinet, for example Matrox Iris GTR, Matrox 4Sight GPm, or Matrox Indio.

If your project was using the legacy software implementation of Profinet, it cannot be run on computers that have the MIL comm module that is installed with DA X if HW-assisted Profinet is not available.

Computers with both DA 5 runtime and DA X runtime installed: The GSD file has changed between the versions. Once you install DA X runtime on a computer, more specifically the MIL Mcom update 68, you must change to the new GSD file. To allow DA 5.1 projects to run on a computer that has DA X runtime on it you will need to install DA 5.1 Update 9 or newer. There is a Product Bulletin with additional details.

Custom Steps

Any Custom steps must be rebuilt. In previous versions it was just a question of updating the references, but in DA X the structure has changed a bit to accommodate .NET Standard. We recommend creating a new project structure using the Custom Step Wizard in Visual Studio 2017, and transferring your code into the new structure. DA 5 requires .Net framework 4.7.1. More information can be found in the document Introduction to Matrox Design Assistant Custom Steps.pdf.

CodeVerify Custom Step

The CodeVerify custom step is no longer distributed since the operations have been incorporated into the CodeGrade step. If your project is using CodeVerify, you have the choice of upgrading the Custom Step as described above, using the sources provided with DA 5. Alternately, you can modify the project to use the new CodeGrade step.

Items requiring changes to project

Reconfigure

Modelfinder and Patternmatch reference points have been changed from ReferenceX, ReferenceY to ReferenceFrame.X, ReferenceFrame.Y and ReferencePoint.X , ReferencePoint.Y respectively. This change allows binding these values directly to an Editable Annotation so that the operator can change them directly in a display of the model without needing to call a Reconfigure step.

Blob

To support depth map images as simply as possible, the only blob threshold modes offered are Simple, Two level and None. If your project uses HighPass, LowPass, BandPass or BandReject, you will need to add an ImageProcessing step to precondition the image. The Threshold operation in the ImageProcessing step offers all the options.