Latest Release of Helinks STS

Release STS-3.14.0

New Features

STS Model Navigator

A new Model Navigator component provides an integrated tree view for browsing and navigating all project elements directly within the workbench. Using the built-in filter, elements such as specific functions, IEDs, or other elements can be quickly found and revealed in the appropriate diagram.

Greatly improved flexibility in Application Templates

Application templates have seen a large improvement in customizability, impacting every aspect from specification to implementation:

• Conditions on participants: application templates can now use conditions to evaluate whether a given function or other element should be automatically included. With such filters, application template instances can be restricted to just a subset of the project, making it easy to set up separate instances for different voltage levels or bays that can not accidentally interact with each other

• Most communication parameters can now be fully parameterized using the existing variable framework. Two new variable groups have been added that allow referencing data from both the sending signal or the receiving input:
  <sender.bay.name> resolves to the name of the bay where the sending signal(s) reside.
  <receiver.function.desc> resolves to the description of the function that hosts the receiving input.
  Care must be taken to not specify conflicting values - applications that send data from multiple bays within the same control block may have different variable values for each bay.

• Input roles in the application template definition can likewise use variables referring to the sender. When the template is applied to participants, the input will be chosen or created according to the resolved name. This allows users to specify exactly which input to use in relation to the sent data, and preplan later binding accordingly.

• Application roles can now also be created without a project prototype, by referencing a library Function, ConductingEquipment, Bay or existing application role from a different application template.

Internal Bindings consolidated in one dialog on AllocationRole/Virtual IED

A new dialog now gives full overview and allows editing of all ExtRef, InRef, Supervision and other related settings for inputs.

Automatic Supervision Allocation

GOOSE and Sampled Values service configurations now offer an option: Automatically allocate supervision. With this option set, LGOS and LSVS logical nodes will be automatically chosen and configured during SCL communication configuration, reducing manual assignment effort. Automatic assignment can be overridden or corrected using the new Internal Binding dialog.

Improved support for IEC61850-6-100 namespace

• Application templates can now be exported as ASD files

• SSD export can be enriched with 6-100 Applications

Implementation editor (experimental, opt-in)

Applications have gained an additional tab, ‘Implementation’. It offers a tree view of all IEDs publishing data via the selected application. The view is filtered to show only communication artifacts such as control blocks, datasets and fcda. Data that is specified in this application is highlighted in green. The editor allows tailoring the details of how the application is implemented, and is meant to supplement the automatic SCL communication configuration with manual changes that will not be overwritten by future runs of the SCL communication configuration. These changes can be applied to individual IEDs, or to all current and future IEDs of the same type (application templates only).
Some use-cases that became possible with the Implementation editor:

• Assign which preconfigured control block a given client should subscribe to.

• Move control blocks and datasets to a different logical device or logical node

• Unify datasets and control blocks of multiple applications (this requires editing each application)

• Split specified data across multiple control blocks and datasets

Improvements

Menu, Toolbar and general UI

• Menus, toolbars, and context menu commands have been reorganized for better discoverability and workflow efficiency.

• Some list views now use alphabetical sorting instead of creation order. More to come in future releases.

• Allocation role is now consistently used across the tool, replacing Virtual IED and AssignedDevice

Communication Editor

• Added support for LSVS assignment in the Sampled Value Matrix.

• Added a new SubNetMatrix view for managing subnetwork configurations and IP addresses.

SCL Communication configuration

• Communication Configuration now properly respects the publishing and subscription capabilities of access points, if Services are defined in Access Points.

Function Diagram

• Available IEDs are now ordered alphabetically in the Implementation dialog, while still prioritizing IEDs that are likely to match user intent.

Import / Export

• STS now remembers the previous directory for Project Export and Import wizards.

• STS now remembers the previous directory when running the "Import" Dashboard action.

Application Editor

• Application templates no longer automatically refresh their association with project elements, and instead do so only when explicitly using the “Refresh” button, running the SCL communication configuration, or opening the application view.

• Assigning an element to a role-less component of the application now creates a role for that component, allowing the assignment to persist in the library and be distributed to other instances.

• Add Participant dialog now has resizable columns, so that long names can be fully represented.

• Service type filter checkboxes now take Application templates into account.

Bug Fixes

Export

• Fixed SCL Header ToolID not matching the version of STS that is exporting.

• Fixed UI freeze when excluding Substation elements from Export.

• Fixed control blocks incorrectly including IEDName element in exported ICD files.

• Fixed exported ICD files not having the most recent SCL Header History.

• Exporting a CID file with publishers could include multiple copies of the same IED if subscribing to it via multiple service types.

SCL Import

• STS no longer allows import to overwrite an IED if the IED is locked.

Communication

• In case the specified subscriber LNode is not allowed to host ExtRef for this device, the AccessPoint ref in Subscription IEDNameType could point to the wrong AP

• Fixed SCL coordinates not being properly synchronized to the SIL model.

• Service configurations with Control Blocks no longer throw an error when

Dashboard

• Fixed Dashboard not registering the first click on actions sometimes.

Application Editor

• Fixed the Details View of a normal application incorrectly saying "Participants of $application".

• Fixed a problem where a layouting action was appended t

Project Documentation

• Fixed PDF Documentation only containing one substation.

• Fixed Application Template using bad labels in generated PDF.

Library

• Update from Library did not correctly set the specified LNType. This is only relevant in SSD-only workflows, where the value is not set due to never implementing the logical node.

• Update from Library: a bay with multiple shared ConductingEquipments that contain different intrinsic EquipmentFunctions could sometimes update an equipment function from the wrong source.

Extended Parameters Global Editor

• Depending on project, global editor could internally crash while opening, preventing edits from being actually applied to elements