Deployment

The following describes how add-ins are deployed. The add-ins covered in this topic are:

• Hosted Add-in
• General Add-in
• SmartComponent

Deploying Hosted Add-ins

Hosted Add-ins are also referred to as PowerPacs.

A PowerPac requires that RobotStudio is installed to be meaningful. RobotStudio can optionally be installed side by side with another version.

A PowerPac is its own product and shall be installed separately from RobotStudio. Under development it should be possible to install a PowerPac side by side with a previous version.

Requirements for Hosted Add-in Deployment

• A hosted add-in shall be installed in its own folder structure under:

  %ProgramFiles(X86)%\Common Files\ABB\

  Example:
  C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\ABB\Sample PowerPac 2020

• The name of the installation root folder shall be “Name Version”.

  Example: Sample PowerPac 2020

• The name of the .rsaddin file shall be the same as the root installation folder.

  Example: Sample PowerPac 2020.rsaddin

• During development it should be possible to install two major versions of the hosted add-in side by side.

• A hosted add-in should specify the minimum RobotStudio version it requires to work, using the MinimumHostVersion element. This makes sure that a newer add-in not be loaded into an older RobotStudio.

• A hosted add-in should specify its license feature name using the LicenseFeature element if required.

• It is important that the file name is unique between different versions since this makes it possible to install two add-ins with different versions.

Deploying General Add-ins

Refer to the Loading of Add-Ins chapter to get information related to this.

Deploying Smart Components

In order that the SmartComponents appear along with RobotStudio SmartComponents, the SmartComponent with .rslib extension should be placed under:

%ProgramFiles(X86)%\ABB\RobotStudio version<\ABB Library\Components