RapidPlan 2.5 Release Notes

We are thrilled to announce the new release! This update brings a host of new features, improvements, and bug fixes designed to enhance your user experience and improve overall performance.

 

1. RapidPlan Create

1.1. Major Improvements

✅ Enhanced re-parenting feature boosts alignment process

Get ready to take your alignment to the next level with our newly enhanced re-parenting feature, designed to simplify and accelerate your workflow!

Smart Offsetting: Re-parenting your objects? Don't worry about the offset! Our feature automatically maintains the original offset with the old parent and calculates a new offset with the new parent, ensuring a smooth transition.

Bulk Re-Parenting: Now, you can effortlessly move multiple targets/frames/mates (e.g. 50 weld points) to a new parent frame while keeping the same old location! No more tedious one-by-one adjustments.

Bulk Re-Parent referencing to World Origin

✅ Auto-Save securely save your latest work

We've added an automatic project saving feature. It will be automatically enabled after upgrading to this version. This function can be disabled from the project settings. You no longer have to worry about losing your work in the middle of a task!

Auto-Save

✅ Create mates by double-clicking on an un-mated object

✅ Trajectory Smoothing

This feature brings a more realistic trajectory, closely mirroring the smooth paths found in real-life scenarios, which enables more accurate interference reports(New feature) and cycle time analysis.

  1. Smoothing Definition: Set smoothing values from 0.0 mm to 500 mm for realistic robot trajectories.

  2. Global and Individual Settings: Define smoothing globally or per waypoint.

  3. Enhanced Visualization: View smoothed trajectories within RPC.

1.2. Other Improvements

  • Joint Numbering Starting from One for Enhanced User Clarity: The joint numbering now starts from one instead of zero. Previously, users had to type in joint number 6 to refer to the additional external axis joint index 7, which was confusing. This update aligns the numbering with common expectations.

  • Manual Connection Conversion in RPC: To provide RPC users with enhanced flexibility in handling their connections by allowing the conversion of auto-connects to manual connections, even when they contain invalid or incomplete connections.

  • Saving Robot Models as RPC Project: Now supports the import of robot models with joint dependencies, coupled joints, and variable joint limits as project files.

1.3. Braking changes

  • Auto-connect validation may take lot longer when loading older project (<2.4) [ID:33168]

    • A workaround is reduce the maximum number of iterations for the existing auto-connects before revalidation


2. RapidPlan Control

2.1. Major Improvements

✅ Render autoconnects and routes on canvas

  • Now users can see the autoconnects and routes on RapidPlan Control

     

     

✅ A cleaner and more intuitive layout

[GIF: Switching Projects and Workcell tab, enter to operation mode to show color change]

  • Selected pane button now flows into the active pane, clearly indicating which pane is active

  • Command Pane has been split into the Projects Pane and the Workcell Pane

  • Cosmetic changes provide a more modern look and clearer indication of the mode of the appliance

✅ Speed limited link selection

  • Users can now limit the maximum velocity of a robot’s links from the Robot Advanced Settings dialog

  • Negative values indicate no limit, fixed links cannot be limited as they cannot move

  • LIMITATION Currently, we only support one maximum speed limit. Thus the minimum nonzero limit is globally applied to all links. This will be rectified when the robot supervisor is complete

✅ Tags Selector Drop-down

  • Added a target selection feature to filter the connections.

  • Users can now use the dropdown to filter connections more easily.

  • added a toggle option to filter either “Any connection with these targets” or

    Connections with only these targets”.

2.2. Other Improvements

  • Profinet Interface

    • Add Acquired/Released signals to the profinet IO map (ID:35429)

    • Loading and Unloading projects with PNIO (ID: 32718)

  • The order of robots in Control Panel can now only be changed in settings. Robots can be drag sorted, or sorted alphabetically.

    •  

2.3. Braking Changes

  • Fanuc Robot always changes Robot Speed to 100 when acquiring control (ID:27440)

  • Profinet Lookup Table breaking updates:

    • Group targets by robot/preset and frames by World/parent robot (ID:35201)

    • Data is sorted alphabetically (exceptions: stateful objects come first, Origin frame always has id 0) (ID:37577)


3. RapidPlan ASCII API

3.1. Major Improvements

  • Added validation argument to UpdateTarget command

  • Added BlockMove + ContinueMove commands (more details to come), also updated CombinedMove with new optional blockMove argument

  • Updated Move command with a new argument constraint.

  • Correction of the preset-switching behavior in a CombinedMove command.

  • Updated name of HoldMove and ResumeMove commands (prev. block/continue)

  • Added MultiRobotMove command and updated SetAlternateLocation with a new mode multirobot.

3.2. Other Improvements

3.3. Braking Changes

  • Fanuc Robot always changes Robot Speed to 100 when acquiring control (ID:27440)


4. Known Bugs/Limitations

4.1. RapidPlan Create

ID

Content

Status

ID

Content

Status

33873

Converting multiple auto-connects to manual connections fails if the targets to be connected for those auto-connects are the same

Fixed

31952

No warning is provided to user for any lost target assignments or connections when transitioning from model mode to roadmap mode

Open

34443

[Limitation] Software hangs sporadically when setting voxel size to 2mm

Open

34370

When clicking on OK in a Mate dialog, the last selected state under the Mate dialog is selected as the active state and not the state of the active preset

Open

29701

[Limitation] Validate remaining does not work when jog dialog is open

Open

 

Deterministic path planning is not guaranteed for clearances greater than 10cm

Open

 

Clearance Rule and Disable collision checking dialog allows creating a rule with same name across presets

Open

32765

Live Robot Connection makes the override speed of the teach pendant to be 100% upon connection

→ [Fixed] The override speed is not overridden by 100%

Fixed

28237

Live Connect to Kawasaki robots may fail if the robot controllers have been connected in RTR controller’s control panel previously. To use Live Connect again, the /tmp/krnx folder and its contents needs to be manually removed. The location of the /tmp/krnx folder is under /var/lib/rtr_appliance_app

Open

32731

[Limitation] Stateful targets and frame are not supported. Put in another way, any objects with any descendants such as targets and frames cannot be made stateful

Open

33990

Reparenting a frame that is mated to an object can cause inconsistency with mates

Open

34623

Numerical calculation errors cause collision detection when a tool and link are in close proximity.

Fixed

31267

[Limitation] RPC only works properly with US-EN locale while no warning given in RPC when the wrong locale is selected. In many countries such as Germany, the decimal separator is a comma, this causes errors in RPC. Users must change the locale when working with RapidPlan.

Open

4.2. RapidPlan Control

ID

Content

Status

ID

Content

Status

 

Disconnecting one robot turns off display for all robot voxels

 

 

Upgrading from a 2.3 project will delete any existing robot control logs

 

 

No warning given in CP when the wrong locale is selected

  • Only accepts US-EN

Open

19828

Interlock recording does not work with partial execution

 

 

DSM boxes, objects, and frames are tracked in the Profinet look up ID table. When items are created or removed, their Profinet IO mappings are handled as such, the handler retrieves the new id of the entity, and publishes it with Profinet. However, this does not cover cases where an external command source elicits a change in the DSM that’s unknown to a PLC.

 

 

Planning moves with DSM object attached to the robot will be rejected with an error in 2.5

 

Robot Control

  • ABB [20230621-8045099]: In very rare cases, the robot is not responding to the commanded trajectory. This is under investigation with ABB.

  • ABB [20230609-7981814]: In very rare cases, the robot reports joint out of range error for a target that’s very close to the joint limit. This is under investigation with ABB.

  • Yaskawa: if a robot is left in AcquireControl mode for more than 2 hours, a joint state loss error is reported. To avoid the error, a Yaskawa robot should be in ReleaseControl mode if left idle for an extended period of time.