Inductive Automation Blog

Moving a Legacy System Over to Ignition

The project involved porting a Citect SCADA platform project based on TOP Server as the OPC server. The Citect system is a legacy system with various iterations enhanced over time by various parties. Each party had their own methodology, naming conventions, and standards for graphic objects. The goal of the port was to move the entire legacy system to Ignition, and, as part of the process, normalize the tag tree and naming conventions with uniform HMI navigation behavior. As there was no overall documentation for the legacy system, the port consisted of reverse-engineering the entire Citect system. Due to this, for functional validation to be effective, the ‘new’ Ignition windows had to contain graphics objects with a look, window placement, and behavior equivalent to the Citect system.