Visual plc software

The Productivity line of PLCs is their high-end offering in that space. The downsides include few advanced features, ladder logic only programming, and no simulation. It appears to be similar to the Productivity line, but address based.

The big selling point for this application in education is the built in simulation. The benefit is that this software is fairly flexible and matches a lot of use cases. Sometimes the hardware manufacturer will offer customized versions of the CoDeSys environment, and the vanilla version is available free on the CoDeSys website.

It appears to be fully featured, easy to use, and it has an easy to use simulator. This is probably a good option for learning PLC programming.

As a bonus, this package includes HMI programming, as well. This is a new player in the PLC space. It implements all five languages of IEC and has a built-in simulator. This runs in a virtual machine in the cloud and allows 30 minutes of access at a time.

You can upload files to the VM, so this could probably work in a class setting. See table with a breakdown. By Jon Breen January 26, Free PLC programming software lets students learn on their own instead of needing a lab. Free Tag-based IEC language support User-defined type Struct support Code reuse features like functions and add-on instructions Built-in simulation. The highly graphical and fully customizable workspace provides a user-friendly interface with full visibility and control over the entire system.

Software which uses Excel to monitor, log, collect alarm information and change configurations for the PLC. Americas - Factory Automation. Simple Application Controllers. Motion Controllers. Full PLC virtualization would allow you to run a Schneider Electric Unity XL programming environment and then migrate to a Rockwell Automation Studio environment without changing any hardware assets in the field. A PLC is not just one piece of hardware. The other components of a PLC would also need to be virtualized to achieve vendor inter-operability:.

For example:. What kind of benefits would there be to the OT industry? Wait… Are PLCs expensive? Are there lots of them out there? Is cost reduction in OT really a driver for big companies?

Another person who reached out to me when I posted on the topic of PLC virtualization was a controls engineer of a biotech company. He felt that the dynamic nature of their business did not fit into the traditional cost and form-factor of a PLC and wanted to know what I had learned about the current state of PLC virtualization. They were looking to solve the hardwired relay-logic rats nest problem they encountered every time they released a new car model and needed to modify their assembly lines.

We have seen that virtualization in IT can allow resources to be pooled together and clustered to increase performance and reliability. For example, there are some fundamental challenges with the deterministic nature of PLCs and the indeterministic, performance focused nature of IT virtualization. Blog Post. LinkedIn Twitter Facebook Email.

How could virtualization reduce OT costs? Customers would no longer be locked into a single vendor for all hardware. Fieldbus and other open standards have already helped with this vendor lock-in issue over the years. More generic, commoditized hardware would eliminate the need for these middlemen and the additional margins they are putting on these products.