Introduction of VBA:

Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) is still very popular among Independent software vendors (ISVs). All leading and popular industrial software for supervisory level monitoring and control applications, use VBA power. From RSView32 or iFix to most of leading SCADA software, all give you option to uses VBA to empower you to perform tasks that you never thought possible on a “fraction of time” that it takes to perform the task by hand.

VBA gives me additional flexibility and I am no longer slave of software vendors. Although industrial applications vendors try to satisfy customers with most of features, but these vendors never use these applications which they build, you use it. Needs and expectation vary from plant to plant.

If you are active in Automation & Control Industry, you have seen and heard about VBA directly or indirectly, and now you wonder what it is, or what it can do for you.  Believe me, life will be never be same again if …… you know how to get benefit from VBA while most of engineering projects during developing, upgrading or migrating applications. You can get jobs done quickly. You can migrate, upgrade or edit applications in a fraction of time as compare to actual total time. You can track your errors. You can trouble shoot and narrow down problem. If you are system integrator, you may want to save your value able time and if you are end user you may want to save money. 

In this section you will find useful code, exercises, examples and tips in Industry which will help you to Get Smart on job. These practical examples will walk you through most common usage of VBA, which you can use not only in industrial applications like RSView, Proficy iFix etc but also any type of non technical applications that support VBA like MS Excel, MS Word. MS Office, Corel Draw,Crystal Reports etc. Actually, smart people use VBA in real life to make their jobs easy. All you need common sense and skill of using keyboard and mouse, which I hope you already know if you are reading this on AutomationMedia.com

The ability to use VBA and scripting in any industrial or SCADA applications opens the system for almost limitless uses. VBA can be used to significantly customize and extend the functionality of any application which supports it. In industrial software, you should use VBA to leverage additional functionality, rather than using it to replace existing, built-in features and functionalities.

Whenever you use VBA, indirectly you are using two applications, any main application (like iFix, RS View, MS Excel etc.) and VBA IDE. IDE stands for Integrated Development Environment. 

In most of industrial applications and all Microsoft products, you can start VBA with hot key - Alt + F11

If you want to feel difference, check back frequently for update of technical bits, practice exercises at office or home and  then use it daily jobs. 

In coming technical bists, you will learn about

-          Overview of VBA, basic terms and how to use VBA IDE to write you programs, macros etc.

-          Statements and commands to perform your favorite work.

-          Performing complex calculations: one of the most common and popular use by industrial and technical world.

-          Common examples to write data on log files and trace problems.

-          Document’s Automation: a common use in non technical world. Automated letter writing and automated spreadsheet handling, special equation handling and lot more…

-          Mass level changes in csv files, text files or excel files to make big jobs small (3^rd party vendor’s software management).

-          How to do months work in days and days work in hours/minutes.

-          Customized application interfaces.

-          Getting and moving data to databases….don’t just assume that you can’t work with database. It’s easy and you can do it. You will see in lessons.

VBA is all about doing things your way.

What can it do?  Everything! Almost. The possibilities are endless, but ou can thinkg it is a smart way of doing.

Take a look!

If you are not retired yet, then every step you take to learn VBA, make life easy 

Check out the list of companies who have integrated VBA into their application(s).   

http://msdn.microsoft.com/isv/technology/vba/partners/default.aspx

What do I need to start?

Any application which support VBA. It could be RSView, Proficy iFix, CoralDraw, XLReporter, Crystal Reports and so on …..and of course any MS Office product.

The Future of VBA?

Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) has been a tremendous success, providing a customization platform used by scores of professional developers. Today it is used in the majority of the Office System programs and there are over 700 commercially available third-party applications that include it. Microsoft is incredibly proud of the success of VBA and will continue to support it well into the future as it is an integral component of Microsoft Windows and of the Microsoft Office System including continued support in the next version of Office.

Looking towards the future, MS have pushed the VBA architecture as far as it is technically possible and will take advantage of the innovations provided by managed code technology introduces with the .NET framework to provide the next generation of application customization technology. This approach will provide ISVs and their end-user developers with a much richer feature set including extended language syntaxes, access to a larger collection of controls, a robust security model, source code management and 64-bit application support.

Microsoft is very committed to the Windows based 64-bit architecture and they say that future customization products will reflect this commitment. While VBA will continue to be supported in the 32-bit Windows subsystem on 64-bit processors our native 64-bit application customization approach, just like Microsoft’s future advanced 32-bit customization approach, will be built on the managed code technology introduced with the .NET Framework. 

What you can get with VBA?

You can impress your friends and they will think that you are genius.

You can impress your female by automating her excel sheet for better budget management.

Your boss can think that you are value able asset of company when you will not be doing monkey work and saving lot of time by automating small and easy stuff.

You may have more free time for playing computer games (if you don’t tell anyone that you are using vba).

Good luck!

Where to go next:
Check next lesson :-)



If you want to be a contributor to any course or you have a suggestion for a course, please do not hesitate to contact us. We are always looking for contributors.