Ignition HMI/SCADA Style Guide

Review and improve Ignition 8.1 Perspective, HMI, SCADA, MES, OEE, downtime, and production visualization screens with an offline style assistant built for industrial users. This listing focuses on calm normal operation, clear abnormal-state contrast, semantic color, readable layout hierarchy, operator-safe controls, consistent component styling, and practical high-performance HMI principles.

Tested with Ignition 8.1.53.

Built from 10+ years of manufacturing and industrial automation experience across food packaging, planter-part manufacturing, and Tier 1 automotive environments, including practical Ignition use in production-facing work.

What It Helps With

• Review screenshots, mockups, Perspective view exports, component JSON, style classes, and pasted screen requirements.
• Improve industrial screen hierarchy so operators can quickly answer: current state, abnormal condition, needed action, useful context, and next navigation step.
• Apply semantic color rules for running, stopped, faulted, warning, selected, stale, bad-quality, simulated, and manual states.
• Style indicators, controls, tables, trends, alarm lists, badges, navigation, KPI tiles, and line overview screens so they are consistent and maintainable.
• Translate high-performance HMI ideas into practical styling guidance without requiring live Gateway access or changing a running project.

Example Prompt

Use ignition-hmi-scada-style-guide to review this offline screen concept.

Review this Ignition Perspective line overview mockup for style issues. It has a dark blue background, bright green running equipment, red stopped equipment, large KPI tiles across the top, a center conveyor graphic, a right-side alarm list, and a bottom trend chart. Operators complain it feels busy and they cannot tell what needs action. The screen is for a packaging line and should follow high-performance HMI principles. Give me a practical styling pass I can apply before rebuilding the view.

Example Output

Practical Styling Pass

The main issue is that normal operation is competing with abnormal operation. Rework the view so the packaging line is calm by default and only true exceptions pull the eye.

1. Reset the Color Semantics

• Change the dark blue page background to a neutral charcoal or blue-gray.
• Stop using bright green as the default "running" fill. Use muted gray equipment with a small Running badge or thin green accent.
• Do not make all stopped equipment red. Use gray for idle or planned stop, amber for blocked/starved/changeover/attention soon, and red only for faulted, tripped, unsafe, or alarm-driven stop.

2. Reduce the KPI Tile Weight

Keep the top row, but shrink the tiles and make them status summaries, not billboards. Show only the values operators need first:

• Line State
• Current Rate vs Target
• Active Alarm Count
• Downtime Duration
• Reject Rate

Use muted tiles in normal state. Only the tile with an exception should get a strong border or color accent.

3. Simplify the Conveyor Graphic

Make the conveyor a low-contrast process map, not the visual star. Use simple flat shapes, consistent labels, and clear state badges on each zone: Running, Blocked, Starved, Faulted, Manual, Stale. Add arrows only where flow direction matters.

4. Make the Alarm List Action-Oriented

Move the right alarm list from "everything screaming" to a prioritized action panel:

• Sort by priority and time.
• Show equipment, condition, duration, and recommended next check.
• Use red for critical/high alarms, amber for warnings, and gray for events.
• Add an alarm summary badge in the header so operators see the worst condition immediately.

5. Improve the Bottom Trend

Keep the trend, but give it decision context: target rate, upper/lower limits, downtime markers, and a fixed time window. Limit series count so the chart explains the current problem instead of becoming background noise.

Final Rule

After the pass, an operator should know within three seconds: "Is the line healthy, what is abnormal, and where should I look first?"

Offline Capafy Edition

This Capafy edition works from user-provided evidence such as screenshots, mockups, Perspective exports, component JSON, style class snippets, design requirements, and described screen behavior. It does not require live Gateway access and does not modify a running Ignition project.

Live Gateway reads, writes, Perspective imports, runtime deployment, production project changes, SQL/Jython implementation, alarm rationalization, or real-time Gateway control are outside this download edition and require a separate connection, authorization path, and implementation plan.

Suggested Tags

Ignition 8.1, Perspective, HMI Design, SCADA, Automation

Support

For support, contact [email protected].