How to install PM Designer (V4 and V2) on Windows

Decide which version to install

PM Designer V4 is the current release and supports every PK, PT, ITV and PM series panel sold today. PM Designer V2 (2.1) is kept for the earlier generations it alone supports, and for opening projects that were written in V2. The two versions install into separate folders (C:\Program Files (x86)\PM Designer\V4.0 and ...\V2.1) and can live on the same PC; many integrators keep both. If you are unsure which generation your panel belongs to, the model table on the guide home page lists the families, or send us the model number from the back label.

Both installers are available from the PM Designer download page. We email the link rather than publishing it so that we can check the version against your panel and follow up if a model needs V2. The V4 package is about 500 MB; V2 is a 254 MB archive.

System requirements

The manual's own list is modest: about 320 MB of disk space once installed (twice that during installation), 1 GB of RAM recommended for large projects with high-colour bitmaps, and Windows 2000 SP4 or later. In practice both versions run on Windows 7, 8, 10 and 11, 32-bit or 64-bit. Three things matter more than raw specification:

• Administrator rights for the installation itself and for the USB driver. A standard user account can run the software afterwards.
• A real USB port or a serial port if you will download over cable. Some USB-C hubs and docking stations drop the virtual COM port the driver creates; a port on the PC itself is more reliable.
• Screen resolution of at least 1280 x 800 so the property sheets and the screen editor fit side by side. The dialogs are fixed-size and do not scale.

Install the software

1. Close other programs, especially an earlier PM Designer session and any PLC programming tool that may hold a COM port.
2. Unpack the download. V4 arrives as an installer; V2 arrives as a .rar archive, so extract it first with 7-Zip or WinRAR.
3. Right-click setup.exe and choose Run as administrator. Follow the prompts. The default location is under Program Files, and we recommend leaving it there: the application notes, help files and runtime OS images for every panel model are installed alongside the program and some tools expect that layout.
4. Let the installer finish completely. It registers components, copies the panel operating systems (the os_*.pl4 files in V4, os_*.pl3 in V2) and adds a program group with PM Designer, the simulator (PanelSim), Data Transfer Helper (DTH), RecipeEditor and TextEditor.
5. Start PM Designer once from the Start menu and open the Help menu to confirm the manual opens. If the help window is blank, Windows has blocked the .chm file: right-click UserManual_EN.chm in the Hlp folder, open Properties and click Unblock.

Keeping V2 and V4 together. Install V2 first, then V4, so that the newer version registers its file associations last. A double-click on a .pm4 file then opens V4 and a .pm2 file opens V2.

Install the USB driver

A Cermate panel connected by USB appears to Windows as a virtual serial port. The driver that creates it is in the Usb folder of the installation directory (WinUSB4NuVCOM.exe in V4). The installer normally runs it for you; if PM Designer later reports that it cannot find the panel over USB, or Device Manager shows the panel with a warning triangle, run that file as an administrator with the panel disconnected, then plug the panel in again.

To confirm the driver is working, open Device Manager with the panel connected and powered. A new entry appears under Ports (COM & LPT) or under Universal Serial Bus devices. You do not need to note the COM number: in the Download dialog you simply choose USB as the link and PM Designer finds the port itself.

• Use a USB cable with a data connection, not a charge-only cable, and avoid cables longer than 3 m.
• If the panel is recognised and then drops out during a download, switch to Safe Mode in the Download dialog (it buffers the data in the panel's RAM before writing to flash) or use Ethernet.
• On a locked-down corporate laptop the driver may be blocked by policy. Ethernet download needs no driver at all, so set the panel's IP address in Panel Setup and use that instead; Chapter 11 shows how.

What you see on first launch

PM Designer opens with an empty workspace. The Project Manager on the left is the tree of everything in the project: a Global node for languages, fonts, pictures, sounds, texts, global tags and global macros, and one node per panel application with its setup, links, tags, screens, alarms, recipes, data loggers and macros. The Screen Manager lists screens as names or thumbnails. The main menu has eleven entries: File, Edit, View, Screen, Draw, Object, Project, Panel, Tools, Window and Help. If a tool window is missing, re-enable it from the View menu. Chapter 2 walks through building a project in this workspace.

Updating or removing PM Designer

To move to a newer V4 build, uninstall the old one from Windows Settings, reboot, then install the new build; project files are not touched. Export any custom picture libraries or macro files you keep inside the installation folder first, because the uninstaller removes that folder. To remove the USB driver, uninstall the device from Device Manager with "delete the driver software" ticked. The installation folder also contains DelRegUI.bat, which clears PM Designer's saved window layout from the registry; run it if the tool windows come up off-screen after a monitor change.