EtherCAT ESI Manager

To access this editor:
On the Tools menu, click EtherCAT ESI Manager.

Use the EtherCAT ESI Manager to manage EtherCAT SubDevice Information (ESI) files. You can perform the following tasks:

Add ESI files to RMCTools
View the ESI files that are already added
Remove any ESI files that are not needed
Export ESI files

The ESI Manager can also manage SCI files, which are less common, but can be useful in large systems where you wish to apply the same configuration to many identical devices. SCI files are managed in the EtherCAT ESI Manager in the same way as ESI files.

Using the EtherCAT ESI Manager

The first step in creating an EtherCAT network is to add ESI files in the ESI Manager. To do so, you must have first obtained the proper ESI file for each device that will be on the network. See EtherCAT SubDevice Information (ESI) file for details.

Adding SubDevice ESI Files

Once you have obtained an ESI file (or many files) and saved it to your PC, add it to the ESI Manager:

On the EtherCAT menu, select ESI Manager.
In the ESI Manager, click Add File. Browse to the ESI file that you have downloaded, select it and click Open.

Optionally, click Add Folder to browse to a folder location on your PC that contains multiple ESI files that you have already downloaded. This will add all the ESI files from that folder location at once.
Wait for the ESI Manager to process the selected file, then close the dialog.

Note on including many ESI files: Some manufacturers include ESI files for many SubDevices in a single download. If that isn’t necessary for your project, you may want to consider adding only the ESI files for the specific SubDevices you require. Otherwise, if you have installed many ESI files, the processing time in the ESI Manager may be very long for subsequent files, as RMCTools needs to process all the existing files each time. If you did accidentally add many more ESI files than necessary, you can remove them.

Viewing ESI Files

The ESI Manager displays all the ESI files that you have added, listed by manufacturer name.

Click the expand icon to view the individual ESI files for a manufacturer and click the second expand icon to view the devices covered by that particular ESI file.

Removing ESI Files

To remove an ESI file, in the ESI Files list, choose the .xml file and click Delete.

To remove all the ESI files for a manufacturer, in the ESI Files list, choose the manufacturer and click Delete.

Exporting ESI Files

To export an ESI file, in the ESI Files list, choose the .xml file and click Export.

To export all the ESI files for a manufacturer, in the ESI Files list, choose the manufacturer and click Export.