Use of cursors

In order to measure times or to display all (system) events that occur at a particular time, cursors can be used in the TwinCAT 3 Real-time Monitor.

Adding cursors

To add a cursor, proceed as follows:

1. Right-click within the display area of the chart.
A context menu opens, which contains the command Add Cursor as well as a command to delete all existing cursors.
Use of cursors 1:
2. Click Add Cursor.
A new cursor is created in the center of the chart.

Use of cursors 2:

Deleting cursors

There are two ways to delete a cursor:

Inside the chart

1. Right-click within the display area of the chart
A context menu opens which contains a command to delete all existing cursors.
Use of cursors 3:
2. Use the Remove Cursor command of the cursor you want to delete.
The cursor is deleted.

Inside the cursor window

1. Right-click the cursor you want to delete.
A context menu opens with a command to remove the cursor.
2. Use the command Remove Cursor to delete this cursor.
The cursor is deleted.

Navigating using the cursors

All cursors that were created are displayed in the cursor window.

Use of cursors 4:

Double-clicking a cursor causes the display within the chart to jump to the exact position where the cursor is positioned. The cursor is centered in the display area.

Measuring times

The cursors can be used to precisely determine the execution times of processes or the time of occurrence of a user event. To do this, move one cursor to a relevant time within the display. The cursor automatically "latches" to events and displays the events occurring at that time for the active cursor in the cursor window. In the following figure, this is the application event Counter Start Interval for cursor 1.

Use of cursors 5:

To measure the duration of the process "Context_2_Counter", proceed as follows:

1. Create a cursor for the process start or use an existing cursor.
2. Move the cursor to the sequence / interval start marker of the process "Context_2_Counter" so that this event is displayed in the Event window (see figure above).
3. Proceed accordingly with another cursor and move it to the sequence / interval stop marker of the process "Context_2_Counter“.
The differences between all existing cursors are now displayed in tabular form in the cursor window.
4. Read the value for the cursor you are using directly from the table. For the example shown here, the execution time is 55.5 µs.

Cursor properties

The following properties are available for cursors.

Property

Meaning

Cursor info

Color

Allows you to change the color of the active cursor.

Text

Shows the text displayed at the cursor.

Information

TriggerCursor

Activates the property TriggerCursor, which causes a cursor in trigger mode to remain at the same position in the chart window, rather than being latched to a point in time (which would cause it to disappears from the display area).

Event window

The Event window shows all events taking place at this time for the active cursor. In the following figure, these are the following events for cursor 1:

Use of cursors 6: