Of course we like to save time, so we're going to develop a special FB to handle our valves: auto/manual control, alarms, etc. And let's face it, the less time we all spend on repeating tasks and minutiae, the more time we can spend actually programming.Īs an exercise, let's pretend we have a project with a large number of simple valves. Having come from an object-oriented programming background, I really appreciate what the Function Block/Data Block paradigm will allow you to do in a PLC - it really does push PLC programming towards object-oriented programming. I'm going to focus today on a series of updates that were added in SP1 that make it even simpler to take advantage of the nested data structures we can create in our Data Blocks - specifically, the ability to share UDTs between a PLC and HMI, link UDTs to Faceplates, multiplex arrays of UDTs, and create simple, powerful pop-ups.īefore we get started, let me say that if you're not already taking advantage of PLC data types and Global DBs to build rich data structures in your project, you're missing out. There are a few new features included in TIA Portal V13 SP1 that I have found to be incredibly useful in the past few months and have allowed me to be even more efficient in my programming. While we program systems of all types and flavors, I'm personally most experienced with Siemens (TIA Portal) and Rockwell (RSLogix5000/FactoryTalk View). Here at DMC, we spend a lot of time programming PLCs and HMIs. Hopefully the rest of the information will be still be helpful to you! Some of the functionality shown was removed in Update 3, specifically the ability to multiplex UDTs.

PLEASE NOTE: This blog was written using features available in TIA Portal V13 SP1 Update 1.

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