What changes when an I/O list is generated instead of typed

Writing an I/O list by hand starts with the FDS. An engineer reads through it, works out every physical point the system needs, decides on an address for each one and types it into Excel, device by device. For a system with a few hundred points this is not a hard task. It is a long one. Every point is typed once, by hand, with nothing to check it against.

The mistakes that follow are not skill mistakes. Two devices can end up sharing an address. A device can be missed entirely and nobody notices, because nothing forces the list to match the FDS it came from. The same tag can be typed two different ways in two different places. A downstream tool then reads them as two different tags.

ScaffIQ removes the typing, not the engineering. The I/O framework and tag declarations come directly from the same structured record used to write the FDS, so a device only has to be defined once. Addresses follow one consistent pattern instead of whatever pattern felt natural at the end of a long day. The result exports as a full L5X, ready for Studio 5000. Nothing is retyped, so nothing can be retyped wrong.

This is the transcription step, not the design step. Deciding the control philosophy, the permissives and the interlocks is still the engineer's job. ScaffIQ does not do it for them. A separate add-on, the Sequence Engine, reviews that sequence logic against the same schema once it exists. The compiler's own job stays narrow: keep the paperwork agreeing with itself, so a renamed tag or a changed device shows up everywhere at once instead of nowhere.

You can see the actual ScaffIQ wizard, screen by screen, importing an FDSIQ export through to a locked L5X export. How It Works.

An engineer reviews and tests everything FDSIQ and ScaffIQ generate before it goes anywhere near a running system.