5. The Operator Panel and Faceplates

The trainee never sees the flowsheet. The Operator Panel is a control-room window built from the plant automatically: one tile per controller, valve, switch, input block and piece of equipment, an alarm banner, a clock. Faceplates are the same tiles opened one at a time from the operator screens of page 6.

What you will learn

• Opening the panel and reading its tiles
• Changing a set point, switching a controller to manual, opening a valve, starting a pump
• The alarm banner, acknowledgement and the summary
• Faceplates

Prerequisites

• Page 2: a session is running or frozen

Opening it

Operator Training > Operator Panel, or the Operator panel... button on the Instructor Station. On a single PC put it on a second monitor; page 10 explains how to run it on the trainee's own PC.

The clock shows simulated time and turns amber with FROZEN or STOPPED when the instructor holds the plant. Values refresh every step.

Tiles

Controller

Row	Meaning
PV	The controlled variable, in the controller's units, in bright text
SP	The set point; type a value and press Enter
OUT	The controller output in percent
MAN OUT	The manual output, editable while the controller is in manual, in the units of the manipulated variable
Mode	AUTO or MANUAL
Switch to MANUAL / AUTO	Toggles the mode. Going to manual is bumpless: the output is held where the controller left it

Valve

Opening in percent (with (stuck) in red when the stem is locked by a malfunction), the flow through it, and either Set % for a hand valve or Driven by controller for a valve a PID manipulates.

Switch and Input

A Switch block toggles ON/OFF. An Input block writes one property of one object, the way the classic Input block does; the tile shows the target, the current value and a Set entry.

Equipment

Read-only values with one or two actions, depending on the type:

Equipment	Values	Actions
Separator, tank, CSTR	Pressure, temperature, level and level %
Pump	dP, power, speed, flow	Target rpm, Start / Stop
Compressor, expander	dP, power, outlet T, speed
Heater, cooler	Duty, outlet T, wall T	Set duty (fixed-duty mode)
Heat exchanger	Duty, hot and cold outlet T, fouling
Column	Top and bottom T, top P, condenser and reboiler duties, reflux ratio
Anything else	Outlet T, P and flow

Gauges

Analog, digital and level gauges show their monitored value in their own units; a gauge in alarm shows the level (H, HH...) in red.

Every action is journaled

Each entry, button and toggle goes through the session as an operator action: it is applied at the start of the next step and written to the journal with the trainee's wording (PID-013 set point -> 0.35 m, LV-001 opening -> 25 %, P-101 STARTED). Objectives of kind OperatorAction (page 4) match on that text.

Try it

With the session running at 5x:

1. On PID-012, type 2.5 in SP and press Enter. Watch PV climb over the next minute and PV-001's opening drop.
2. Press Switch to MANUAL on PID-013, then type 10 in MAN OUT: the level valve opens to 10 % regardless of the level.
3. Back on the Instructor Station, the Journal tab has both actions under Operator.

Alarms on the panel

The banner under the clock shows the newest unacknowledged alarm with its time, tag and level, and blinks red while anything is unacknowledged. Acknowledge clears the banner for every current alarm; Summary... opens the alarm summary of page 7. The count on the right is the number of active alarms.

Faceplates

On the operator screens (page 6), clicking an equipment symbol, an ISA bubble or a button configured for it opens a faceplate: a small window with the same tile the panel would show for that object. Faceplates are the usual way to operate from a P&ID-style screen, with the panel kept for an overview.

The next page builds those screens.