nice DSC controls for high vacuum

[ensegre]

I'll be doing a SCADA for a high vacuum system. I have not yet settled on the graphic style of the hmi (skeuo, flat, diagrammatic, whatever), but I'd like to do something slick. I have looked at DSC controls: 3d pipes somewhat do the job, but all the rest is crude. Looked into the DSC images navigator, images are sooo 2002, and again little specific to lab. Have looked at https://www.openautomationsoftware.com/downloads/free-hmi-symbols/, images are pngs and not too much choice either. Searched a bit the net and found nothing.

I miss specific elements like vertical turbopumps, guillotine gates, vacuum chambers, ideally scalable. I'm tempted to inkscape down my path of personal crap-art, but I know it will end into another bad trip. Is there anyone who can suggest a nice source of suitable elements?

[smithd]

draw.io has a set of process control glyphs which you could pull out, but they are just shapes, no colors or animations. I think its supposed to be used for P&ID diagrams.

Edited September 11, 2017 by smithd

[ensegre]

Thanks for the pointers. Indeed inductiveautomation looks too much. First I don't think I can justify the cost (we have anyway a campus license of LV at no extra cost), second it would involve another learning curve. Maybe for a more powerful and flexible solution, but. Third "Use powerful 2D vector drawing tools to create any shape..." - If it is me who has to draw, what do I have Inkscape for, then?

draw.io has indeed a few glyphs I could lift for flat buttonsr, but probably not much more added value than other libraries coming with free diagram drawing tools which I have seen. Starting from the good old xfig. Another nice one I discovered recently (mentioned in some tutorial slide I found on the dark side) is yEd.

OTOH, the restraint I'd have in paving my way to crap-art, is that so far I only have had unsatisfactory experiences in trying to customize controls. Unwieldy tool, only partial handling of vector graphics and transparency, and strictly rectangular shapes. Btw, anyone knows how the polygonal multi-shaped controls of DSC are built and made responsive (is it at all exposed by NI, and worth messing with)? I think I might have ran into an explanation somewhere but I'm no way sure [was it in the context of save VI as xml, perhaps? Pure hack then].

ETA: looking at

and

 

Edited September 11, 2017 by ensegre

[MarkCG]

The DSC toolkit Glyph really are pretty horrible. More 1995 than 2002 if anything. I've been using Edraw max to create graphics. There is a lot of P&ID stuff in there.  No high vacuum but it's pretty easy to create graphics from the raw shapes and apply color gradients to give it that 3D effect. The ability to scale easily because of vector graphics is awesome too. You can set you drawing sizes in pixels directly which make it really easy to design for a given resolution. 

https://www.edrawsoft.com/pid-examples.php

I will typically make a P&ID with edraw, export it as a PNG, drop that directly in the front panel and then drop my customized controls with graphics also made in Edraw in place over that. It's produced pretty decent results. 

Edited September 11, 2017 by MarkCG