Adding WinCC Comfort Runtime Toolbar Controls in TIA Portal V14

Overview

WinCC Comfort V14 and WinCC Advanced V14, shipped inside the TIA Portal V14 SP1 engineering environment, expose a configurable runtime toolbar that appears as a persistent footer strip across the bottom of every HMI screen on Comfort Panel targets. On a 19-inch TP1900 Comfort (article number 6AV2124-1UC02-0AX0), this footer is rendered at native 1366 x 768 px with capacitive multi-touch input. The toolbar consolidates the canonical HMI navigation primitives — Home, Back, Forward, Previous, Help, Print, and Exit Runtime — into a single persistent control bar that the runtime instantiates automatically once the screen hierarchy has been declared in the project's Screen Navigation editor.

The toolbar remains the principal user-visible navigation surface on every Comfort Panel from the 4-inch KTP400 Comfort through the 22-inch TP2200 Comfort, but on the TP1900 it gains particular significance because the 19-inch widescreen form factor provides ample horizontal real estate to render the bar at full button width without crowding screen content. Engineers who move from WinCC flexible 2008 SP4, WinCC V6, or WinCC V7 to TIA Portal V14 typically expect the toolbar to be inserted by default the moment a new device is added to the project. That expectation is partially correct: the wizard that generates the default toolbar is only offered when the project is operating in Project View, not in Portal View. Engineers who remain in Portal View never see the wizard checkbox appear, because the device wizard launch pathway is hidden inside the portal task workflow. This article documents the resolution path, the resulting screen structure that the wizard creates, and the manual re-creation steps for projects where the wizard was skipped.

Prerequisites

The WinCC Comfort V14 SP1 system manual is published as WinCC Comfort/Advanced V14 SP1 System Manual (entry ID 109751167), and the TP1900 Comfort device manual is published as SIMATIC HMI TP1900 Comfort Operating Instructions (entry ID 109478317). Confirm both PDFs are accessible before proceeding — they contain the full screen object palette and the system function reference list.

Why the Device Wizard Checkbox Is Grayed Out

When you add an HMI device to a TIA Portal V14 project for the first time, the device wizard offers to generate the screen hierarchy and the runtime toolbar. The wizard is invoked from the "Add new device" dialog (Project tree → Add new device → SIMATIC HMI → ... → TP1900 Comfort → OK). The dialog contains a checkbox labeled "Start device wizard on confirm click." If this checkbox is permanently greyed out and cannot be ticked, the active view of TIA Portal is Portal View, not Project View.

Portal View is the simplified, task-oriented launchpad that groups engineering activities into "Actions" tiles. Many of the legacy WinCC flexible workflows — including the screen hierarchy wizard, the Library export/import dialog, and the cross-reference viewer — are only exposed in Project View, which is the full IDE-style workbench with a project tree, a detail view, and a working area. The checkboxes that drive the wizard are conditional UI elements: they exist in both views but only receive a non-null enabled state when the active document is the project root in Project View.

Verifying the Active View

1. Open the View menu in the TIA Portal title bar.
2. Observe whether the menu entry "Project View" is shown with a check mark next to it, or whether "Portal View" is marked instead.
3. Click on the unchecked entry to switch. TIA Portal will warn about losing any unsaved work; save and continue.
4. Re-open the "Add new device" dialog. The "Start device wizard" checkbox should now be selectable.

Adding the TP1900 Comfort Panel

With Project View active, expand the project tree, right-click "Devices & Networks" and select "Add new device." Navigate to SIMATIC HMI → Comfort Panel → 19" displays → TP1900 Comfort. The available article numbers are determined by the installed HSP (Hardware Support Package); the most common ordering number is 6AV2124-1UC02-0AX0 (TP1900 Comfort, touch + keys, neutral front, 24 V DC, WinCC Comfort V14 image). The variant -0AX1 is the corresponding no-logo neutral version; the -1AX0 is the same hardware with a configured Profinet device name.

Once the device is added, the project tree will display a hierarchical device node. Expand "Screens" to see the autogenerated root screen, typically named "Screen_1." Right-click "Screens" to invoke the screen wizard, or open the "Screen navigation" editor by selecting the "Screen navigation" entry directly under the device node. The screen navigation editor is the canonical tool for defining the runtime toolbar; manually inserting a footer-area object and wiring events is an unsupported workaround.

Screen Navigation Editor and Toolbar Generation

Double-click "Screen navigation" in the project tree to open the editor. The editor presents a graphical view of every screen in the project, the start screen (root), and a drag-and-drop canvas where navigation relationships are declared. The runtime toolbar is generated automatically from the structure of this navigation graph — the bar does not require per-screen configuration. Internally, the compiler emits an RT-tables descriptor (default location: \<project>\IM\<HMI_tag>\Screens\Runtime_Toolbar.xml) that the runtime WinCCRT.exe reads on cold boot to render the toolbar.

The full system function reference for Comfort Panel runtime is in the WinCC Comfort V14 SP1 manual, section 11.2 "System functions." Each function listed above is documented with its parameter set, required tag connections, and the runtime environments that support it. Note that StopRuntime invokes an orderly shutdown — the panel runtime displays the configured shutdown screen (if any), saves retentive tags, then exits to the Windows shell. On a TP1900 Comfort running Windows CE 6.0 or WEC 7, the shell is a Win32 desktop; StopRuntime does not reboot the panel. To reboot from a button, use RebootPanel or call ExitWindows via a script.

Configuring Which Toolbar Buttons Appear

The selection of buttons that appear in the runtime toolbar is controlled in two places:

1. Runtime settings for the HMI device (Project tree → TP1900 Comfort → Runtime settings → Toolbar): enable or disable individual buttons per project. The setting is global; it cannot be overridden per screen.
2. Screen properties (right-click screen → Properties → Toolbar): enable or disable the toolbar on a per-screen basis. Useful for screens where the toolbar would obscure content (e.g., trend full-screen, alarm log full-screen, recipe view).

Configuring the Toolbar Height and Position

Comfort Panel runtime draws the toolbar at the bottom of the active screen area, with a default height of 36 px on TP1900. To resize or relocate, edit the screen template. In TIA Portal V14 SP1, screen templates are managed through "Screen → Template" on the master screen; the template inherits across all screens using "Use template" in the screen properties. The toolbar height is fixed at 36 px on Comfort Panels and cannot be resized through the runtime settings UI; what can be changed is the visible/invisible state of the bar on individual screens via the per-screen toolbar setting, or the rendering mode (auto-hide on no-touch for legacy key-panel operation, if so configured).

Configuring Screen Navigation Hierarchy

The hierarchy of screens directly drives the "Previous" button in the runtime toolbar. To define the hierarchy:

1. Open the Screen navigation editor (double-click under the device node).
2. Drag screen icons into the editor canvas; the first screen placed is implicitly the root.
3. Drag a line from a child screen to its parent to declare the navigation relationship. The line direction is child → parent.
4. Compile the project. The compiler generates the runtime history stack based on the declared hierarchy; the runtime respects this stack when the user presses Previous or Home.

For projects with more than one root — for example, an operator screen set and a maintenance screen set with separate roots — declare both roots in the screen navigation editor. The runtime toolbar's Home button always returns to the root of the current screen set, not to a single global root. The compiler emits a per-root tag for the navigation state machine; the runtime resolves it dynamically on each screen activation.

Manual Recreation If the Wizard Was Skipped

If a project was created in Portal View and the wizard was bypassed, the screen navigation editor will contain only the root screen. To recreate the toolbar manually:

1. Switch to Project View (View → Project View, or Ctrl+1).
2. Open the Screen navigation editor.
3. Drag every existing screen into the editor.
4. Re-declare parent-child relationships.
5. Open Runtime settings → Toolbar and verify each button is enabled.
6. Open each screen's Properties → Toolbar and verify "Show toolbar" is enabled.
7. Compile and download.

The recompile re-emits the runtime toolbar XML descriptors. No code generation is required; the toolbar is fully data-driven from the navigation editor's output. If a backup of the project exists prior to the wizard skip, the simpler path is to create a fresh project, run the wizard to completion, then copy all screens, tags, and scripts from the original project into the new one. The drag-and-drop clipboard of TIA Portal V14 SP1 handles cross-project element transfer correctly when both projects are opened in the same TIA Portal instance.

Verification Procedure

After downloading the project to the TP1900 Comfort:

1. Boot the panel; observe the splash screen, then the root screen. The toolbar should appear at the bottom of the screen with at least Home and Exit Runtime enabled.
2. Navigate to a child screen by activating a button that calls ActivateScreen. The toolbar's Previous and Back buttons should activate.
3. Press Back; verify the panel returns to the previous screen. Press Forward; verify the panel re-enters the child screen.
4. Press Home; verify the panel returns to the root screen defined in the navigation editor.
5. Press Exit Runtime; verify the panel displays the shutdown screen (if configured) and exits to the Windows shell. The runtime service WinCCRT.exe should terminate cleanly.
6. Inspect the runtime log at \Flash\WinCC_RT\Logs\RuntimeLog.txt for any toolbar descriptor load errors. A clean load emits the line "Toolbar descriptor loaded: N buttons, M history entries."

Troubleshooting Matrix

Runtime Toolbar Generated Button Order

The default button order on the runtime toolbar, left-to-right on a TP1900 Comfort in landscape orientation, is:

1. Home (root icon)
2. Back (left arrow)
3. Forward (right arrow)
4. Previous (up arrow)
5. (separator)
6. Help (question mark, if help file configured)
7. Print (printer icon, if printer configured)
8. (separator)
9. Exit Runtime (door icon)

The button order is fixed by the runtime; customisation requires either building a replacement toolbar with screen objects or using the "Customize" property of the toolbar element exposed in the screen object palette. The "Customize" property exposes the runtime settings dialog and is the supported path for adding custom buttons between the built-in ones. Custom buttons added via "Customize" are persisted to \Flash\WinCC_RT\User\CustomToolbar.cfg on the panel and survive a cold boot.

Performance and Memory Considerations

The runtime toolbar consumes a fixed 36 px vertical band on a Comfort Panel, and draws a transparent overlay atop the screen area below it. On a TP1900 Comfort with the standard 19-inch widescreen, the visible content area is therefore reduced from 1366 x 768 to 1366 x 732. The runtime retains the navigation history stack in 64-bit memory; a typical project with 50 screens sustains a navigation history depth of up to 32 entries before the runtime begins to evict the oldest entry. Beyond that depth, the Back button may not return beyond the eviction point.

To minimise memory pressure in projects with very deep screen hierarchies (50+ screens, with modal dialogs layered), enable the "Limited history" option in Runtime settings → Screen → History depth, and set a depth appropriate to the operator workflow (typically 8-12). The runtime allocates a circular buffer of 16 bytes per history entry; 32 entries consume 512 bytes of working memory, which is negligible compared to the panel's 256 MB RAM on a TP1900 Comfort.

CPU overhead from the toolbar is bounded: the runtime redraws the toolbar only on screen transition, not on tag updates, and uses cached bitmap assets from \Flash\WinCC_RT\Cache\Toolbar\. Cold start of the toolbar takes approximately 80-120 ms on a TP1900 Comfort; warm transitions take less than 16 ms.

Cross-Platform Notes for Panel Variants

The runtime toolbar implementation is uniform across the Comfort Panel family, but renderer behaviour differs subtly with display size:

Engineers porting projects between panel sizes should verify that screen objects placed in the lower 36 px region on a smaller panel do not collide with the toolbar on a larger one. Use the screen template to enforce a 36 px no-touch zone above the toolbar boundary.

FAQ