Application notes

Threat mitigation

Do not lose the USB Key with exported

FactoryTalk Optix Application

. The USB key contains inspectable fields, credentials, certificates, and hashed passwords.

Protect physical access to

Rockwell Automation

manufactured devices.

Do not leave connected devices unattended. Protect physical access to the device and protect logs from device web interface, connected diagnostic session, and file system access via remote assistance tool.

Prevent unauthorized physical access to the device. Protect physical access to the device and improve security level of application files generated by custom logics.

Protect physical access to logged-in user sessions. Prevent the theft of

FactoryTalk Hub

refresh token file by locking the session if unattended.

Protect physical access to logged-in user sessions. Prevent the removal of

FactoryTalk Hub

refresh token file by locking the session if unattended.

Protect physical access to logged-in user sessions. Prevent attacks while logging in to GitHub.

Feature preview

Features labeled as preview should not be used in a production environment.

Spinbox Numeric Input unsigned conversions

When the Spinbox datatype is an unsigned integer, negative inputs are converted to zero.

Mouse Up Event modified behavior

The Mouse Up Event is now executed only when removing the pointer or finger while remaining inside the UI object area. This modification affects the UI controls Panel, Rectangle, Button, Ellipse, Polyline, Image, and AdvancedSvgImage. A new variable related to the pressed status will be included in a future release.

Incorrect status under Micro Controller Driver

When multiple stations are configured, if there is no demand for data the connection status for the station is not updated. To avoid this situation, implement a heartbeat for each station using a runtime Netlogic script to clear a boolean when it is true, and a timer in the station that runs when the boolean is false and sets it to true when the timer completes.

Alarm limits

1 language
Device RAM	Optix Alarms, Logix Tag-based Alarms, and Logix ALDM Instruction Alarms	Logix ALMA Instruction Alarms
1 GB	2500	400
2 GB	5000	800
4 GB	15000	1600
8 GB	30000	3200
16 GB	60000	6400

4 languages
Device RAM	Optix Alarms, Logix Tag-based Alarms, and Logix ALDM Instruction Alarms	Logix ALMA Instruction Alarms
1 GB	700	150
2 GB	1000	200
4 GB	3500	500
8 GB	7000	1000
16 GB	14000	2000

NOTE: If your application uses Logix ALMA instruction-based alarms mixed with other types of alarms, count each ALMA alarm as 5 alarms. For example, if the FactoryTalk Optix application has 100 ALMA alarms and 2000 other alarms, the total number of alarms is 2500. Per the table above for a single local language, this is the quantity of alarms that will run inside 1GB with a normal application.

As shown on the table above, each local language requires additional memory. The additional memory required will be reduced in a future release.

If you are not using the new Alarm Manager or Alarm Summary counters, or if you are upgrading from a previous version of FactoryTalk Optix that does not require the new Alarm Manager or Alarm Summary counters, you can reduce the memory required by disabling alarms collection by setting the

Enable alarms collection

property to

False

.

Increased screen opening time in outdated browsers

If you use older browser versions, screen opening time in browser runtime can increase over time. To avoid this issue, update your web browser to newest version.

Logix extended properties must define both Min and Max range

When importing Logix extended properties, both Min and Max must be defined in Logix and must contain valid values in order for the extended properties to be imported.

Scroll bars

Dragging the scroll bar of rotated UI objects does not work as expected.

Method order

The order in which methods are performed changed in version 1.6.0 and may impact previous applications migrated to version 1.6.0. If this occurs, you will need to update your project.

Unsupported Mysql_native_password authentication plugin

The ODBC database store has been upgraded to use the MySQL ODBC connector version 9.2.0.0 which no longer supports the mysql_native_password authentication plugin.

To work around this issue, in the settings for MySQL Server, open Users and privileges
and change Authentication Type
to caching_sha2_password
.

Enhanced Alarm Banner

In FactoryTalk Optix version 1.6.0, the Alarm Banner widget is enhanced to improve runtime operation stability and performance. If you have a project that was created using a previous version of FactoryTalk Optix and that has an Alarm Banner widget, you must use the upgraded Alarm Banner widget. First, using FactoryTalk Optix version 1.6.0, open or upgrade a project that was created with a previous release of FactoryTalk Optix. Next, remove the Alarm Banner widget from your project. Finally, add a new Alarm Banner widget to the project from the FactoryTalk Optix 1.6.0 template library.

OPC UA Recursive Models

The introduction of OPC UA Structures in 1.6.0 required the enforcement of stricter modeling rules. These modeling rules may prohibit importing any OPC UA model that contains a recursive reference, which is any type definition that contains a reference to itself.

Support for recursion is planned for a future release.

Offline AD and group assignments

If Active Directory (AD) is offline, only domain users who started the runtime can log on at runtime. While such users can successfully log on,

FactoryTalk Optix Application

cannot retrieve user groups in such scenarios.

RA EtherNet/IP Driver - Ethernet communication modules support

You cannot use the 1756-ENET EtherNet/IP Bridge Module with the

RA EtherNet/IP Driver

.

Manual renaming of Image property in project NetLogic

If you upgrade a FactoryTalk Optix project to version 1.7.0 and that upgraded project accesses the

FillMode

property of any Image object via NetLogic, you must manually change the name of the

FillMode

property in the NetLogic of the upgraded project. Rename the

FillMode

property

ImageFillMode

. Apply the change to all relevant scripts in order to compile the NetSolution.

Run FactoryTalk Optix Studio in VMWare image

FactoryTalk Optix Studio requires VMWare tools 12.5.3 or higher in order to launch in a VMWare image.

SD Card support added for widgets

New SD card support was added to the following Widgets:

File System Browser

Select File DialogBox

FTP Server

To use of this functionality, replace the existing widget with a new one from the library.

Because two ResourceURI methods were renamed, if you have developed your own NetLogic that uses these methods you will see a warning message in the log regarding obsolete paths:

ResourceUri.USBRelativePath

ResourceUri.USBNumber

Edit the NetLogic and rename the ResourceUri methods as shown in the following table:

Obsolete Name	New Name
USBRelativePath	DeviceRelativePath
USBNumber	DeviceNumber

MQTT Custom Payload limitation for NodeId Type

When publishing a variable of type NodeId, the payload will contain the attribute of the node being pointed to, rather than the aliased variable itself. This limitation occurs because the mechanism relies on a string formatter using aliases, which does not support retrieving the value of an aliased node attribute if the node is a node pointer. For example:

Expected payload:

name: Variable1 value: {"Id":2,"Namespace":7}

Actual payload:

name: MethodsToCall value: {"Id":2,"Namespace":7}

This behavior cannot be overridden. Mind this limitation when designing applications that rely on MQTT custom payloads for NodeId variables.

RA Device Driver limitation for device support

Parameters on ports other than Port 0, for example Port 10 on selected T-frame drives, are not guaranteed to be supported. For

PowerFlex

7000, communication may require a timeout value of 300 seconds.

RA Device Driver limitation for Rockwell Drives

When using the RA Device Driver to connect to a Rockwell Drive, it is recommended to limit the number of Opitx Devices/Runtimes connecting to a Drive to 1.

Anonymous mode not supported for Codesys driver

Anonymous mode is not supported in the Codesys driver. If you enable anonymous mode in the Codesys driver, the connection fails.

High Availability runtime memory limit may be insufficient for large projects

Large projects deployed to a FactoryTalk Optix High Availability cluster may fail to start if runtime containers do not have enough allocated memory, even when Optix Studio reports a successful deployment. The runtime may repeatedly restart and remain unavailable and the web client never becomes reachable.

To resolve the issue, increase the allocated memory as described in the High Availability cluster troubleshooting section of the

FactoryTalk Optix Installation Guide

.