Industrial automation smart object inheritance break and singleton creation

A method for developing industrial applications, comprising:

• storing, by a system comprising a process, a library of automation objects that represent respective industrial assets and have respective programmatic attributes relating to the industrial assets;
• rendering, by the system, integrated development environment (IDE) interfaces on a client device;
• receiving, by the system via interaction with the IDE interfaces, industrial design input that defines aspects of an industrial control and monitoring project;
• generating, by the system, system project data based on the industrial design input, wherein
• the generating comprises generating at least one of an executable industrial control program, an industrial visualization application, or industrial device configuration data, and
• the generating comprises, in response to determining that the industrial design input selects an automation object, from the library of automation objects, adding an instance of the automation object to the system project data;
• and
• in response to receiving, subsequent to the adding of the instance of the automation object, object edit data that defines an edit to an attribute of the automation object stored in the library:
• modifying, by the system, the automation object stored in the library in accordance with the object edit data,
• in response to determining that modifying the instance of the automation object in accordance with the object edit data is permitted, modifying, by the system, the instance of the automation object in accordance with the object edit data, and
• in response to determining that the modifying of the instance of the automation object in accordance with the object edit data is not permitted, preventing, by the system, the modifying of the instance of the automation object in accordance with the object edit data, wherein the preventing of the modifying causes the instance of the automation object to become a singleton instance that differs from the automation object stored in the library.

A non-transitory computer-readable medium having stored thereon instructions that, in response to execution, cause a system comprising a processor to perform operations, the operations comprising:

• rendering integrated development environment (IDE) interfaces on a client device;
• receiving, from the client device via interaction with the IDE interfaces, industrial design input that defines control design aspects of an industrial automation project;
• generating system project data based on the industrial design input, wherein
• the system project data comprises at least one of an executable industrial control program, an industrial visualization application, or industrial device configuration data,
• the generating comprises, in response to selection of an automation object, from a library of automation objects, for inclusion in the system project data, adding an instance of the automation object to the system project data, and
• the automation objects represent respective industrial assets and have respective programmatic attributes relating to the industrial assets;
• and
• in response to receiving, subsequent to the adding of the instance of the automation object, object edit data that defines an edit to an attribute of the automation object stored in the library:
• modifying the automation object stored in the library in accordance with the object edit data;
• in response to determining that modifying the instance of the automation object in accordance with the object edit data is permitted, modifying the instance of the automation object in accordance with the object edit data;
• and
• in response to determining that the modifying of the instance of the automation object in accordance with the object edit data is not permitted, preventing the modifying of the instance of the automation object in accordance with the object edit data, wherein the preventing of the modifying causes the instance of the automation object to become a singleton instance that differs from the automation object in the library.