[00:00] Sequential Function Charts, often called SFCs, are a powerful way to perform visual programming using Ignition. When you install the SFC module and launch the Designer, you'll have a new node in the Project Browser of your Designer called Sequential Function Charts. It's important to understand that Sequential Function Charts don't belong to any specific project that you have installed on your Ignition gateway, rather they're gateway wide. So all of the projects that you have installed can access and start up all the same set of Sequential Function Charts. And just like other resources inside of Ignition, they're managed from inside of the Designer. So the Designer is where you're going to create, delete, and design all of your Sequential Function Charts. However, even though you're creating them in the Designer, Sequential Function Charts always execute on the Ignition gateway. Even if they're started by the action of a client, for example, the chart always executes on the gateway.

[01:07] So here in the Designer we have our Sequential Function Charts node, and we can create new charts from here, or if we have existing charts, we can access them from here. So for example, here is an example chart we have that mimics a basic batch process, and you could sort of get a quick overview of what these charts are going to end up looking like. And of course, in later lessons, we'll go over all of these individual elements. But SFCs in general are a way to program using elements in a grid, and the logic flows through the elements as they are connected. So here in the Designer is where we do our design work and our programming for the Sequential Function Charts. When a Sequential Function Chart is started, we can also monitor it visually here in the Designer. So for example, if we open up this other SFC, if we start up this chart, we can watch this chart run here in the Designer, but of course, the chart is actually executing on the gateway.

[02:12] And if we have the Vision module installed on the same gateway, we can also perform this sort of visual monitoring from an Ignition Vision client. So now we know some introductory basics of Sequential Function Charts.