1. Interfaces can be set per Line, Area and per project
- Per Line: via the Line property 'Bus Connection' one interface can be set as 'Line connection'
- Per Area: via the Area property 'Bus Connection' one interface can be set as 'Area connection' (placed in the Main Line of that Area)
- Per project: via the Topology property 'Bus Connection' one interface can be set a 'Project connection' (placed in the Backbone Line)
The advantages of this concept are:
- ETS can automatically select & build up the connection with the appropriate interface
- Parallel download
The interfaces can only be selected if they already have been 'discovered' or 'configured'.
- Configured: lists all manually added interfaces so far.
- Discovered: lists all automatically discovered interfaces, unless the discovered interface is already in the configured list.
2. Further optimizations via Bus/Connections/Options
- IP interfaces
- Can automatically become active upon discovery
- Condition = matching multicast address with ETS + matching serial number from the ETS project
- Project connection
- The project connection, if defined can become automatically active instead of the 'current interface'
- Automatic disconnect
- Setting this option means that is not necessary to close the interface explicitly after it has been used for e.g. device download, i.e. the interface becomes automatically available again.
- For first generation interfaces it is recommended to disable this feature in order to avoid time loss, because closing such interface takes quite some time.