Patent ID: 7702409

Claim:
A configuration system for use in a process plant having a plurality of physical and logical process entities which operate together to perform a process and a process controller communicatively connected to the plurality of physical and logical process entities to implement a control routine to control the operation of the process plant, the configuration system comprising: an executable graphic display that includes one or more visual depictions to be displayed on a display device when the graphic display is executed, a parameter memory adapted to store a value of a parameter and a binding memory adapted to store a reference for communicatively connecting the parameter memory to a data source within the process plant; a configuration database that stores an indication of the physical and logical process entities and an indication of the executable graphic display; and a configuration engine that enables a user to configure the operation of the graphic display by producing a screen depicting the indications of the plurality of physical and logical process entities and the indication of the executable graphic display and enables a user to configure the operation of the executable graphic display by dragging the indication of the executable graphic display to one of the indications of the plurality of physical and logical process entities and dropping the indication of the executable graphic display on the one of the indications of the plurality of physical and logical process entities.