You can configure controllers and I/O before the hardware is connected. By configuring a controller placeholder, you can perform most of your hardware configuration offline. After you have physically connected the controller, you can easily assign it to the placeholder.
For information about connecting your hardware, refer to the hardware installation and reference manuals in DeltaV Books Online. At startup, the DeltaV system detects all connected controllers and lists them in DeltaV Explorer as decommissioned controllers. At that point you can drag a decommissioned controller to your control network or to a specific controller placeholder that you have configured in advance.
If you want to do the tutorials that appear in previous sections of this book, you can set up a controller placeholder called CTLR1 and then configure I/O channels for it according to the instructions in the next section.