Model Overview

The iFIX model allows you to create a blueprint or template of the assets in your system and quickly and easily create and maintain instances generated from the Type definition.

The model in iFIX consists of the following components:

• Object Types: An object type is a blueprint. A blueprint is something tangible in your plant that you want to replicate, such as mixer, furnace, or pump, that will have a common structure (common variables and contained types) shared across all mixers, furnaces, and pumps. Object Types will have Variables, Contained Types, and Templates.
• Variables - Individual tags or measurements that are common across all Objects of a certain type, like temperature, pressure, flow, and so on. Variables represent tags that will hold values retrieved via iFIX drivers like IGS and OPC UA client from the devices in your system.
• Templates: Templates provide the capability to have one or more translations of an Object Type into an Object Instance. If you have two different types of pumps that have some commonly shared variables but a subset that are unique, you would create two templates for a single pump type.

• Substitutions - Substitutions allow you to parametrize your Type definition such that you can modify the Object Instances created from the Type and Templates to be unique.
• Contained Types - Contained types allow you to create a hierarchical blueprint of assets that will be instantiated together.

• Object Instances - An instance created from the Object Type. The instance represents an asset in the application and the variables are either created as iFIX tags (direct variables) or point to existing iFIX tags (indirect variables) or are static to the type (static variables).