plc softwares

[Guest be_ready]

how can i find plc softwares for free?(mitsubishi,siemens...etc.) <>

[antht 0]

The idea is to pay. Thats why these companies are able to produce PLC's. No pay, no PLC's.

[jerrycat 0]

YOU DOWNLOAD TRIAL SOFTWARE AT

[Crossbow 295]

It's people like you that want to get it all for free that cause the rest of us to pay thousands of dollars for software that should be a few hundred bucks. Your chances of finding people sharing this software or cracks for it is slim. The pirates and hackers go for the big targets, with many users. There's just not enough demand for this stuff, so they don't waste their time and disk space...

[Sergei Troizky 26]

I do not share the opinion of Antht and Chris. A PLC manufacturer should make profit on PLC, not on software. And bigger the manufacturer is, less it should earn from the software. Mitsu and AB definitely should distribute software for free to anyone who buys 10 or more their PLCs. EDITED 1 YEAR LATER: Today I think it should not depend on the purchased quantity. And any price over $200 for PLC software is bloodsucking. P.S. 5-10 years ago our Mitsubishi distributor was supplying us with Medoc and all it's upgrades for free. This was one of the reasons (though not the main one) to make Mitsubishi our standard PLC. We have consumed estimated ~200 Mitsubishi FX, FX0, FX1 and FX2 PLCs with plenty of extensions during this years. This is a smart marketing, not selling Medoc or RSLogix for over $500 Canadian. Edited 31 Jul 2005 by Sergei Troizky

[JimRowell 1]

Couldn't have said it better. Mitsubishi and to a lessor extent AB are both examples of companies that put comparitively small effort into their software (for the volume of hardware sales). Mitsi is one of the best examples in the industry. GX Dev was old when it was introduced. It uses ancient windows features in a poorly implemented fashion. They've never rewritten it as they should have. It's had only very minor upgrades during its entire life cycle. This from a company who sells millions in hardware every year and has a ready-to-go distribution network. The software should support the core business rather than be a sideline business that thwarts new users from hopping onto the bandwagon. The suggestion of $200.00 max is a good one. Free makes a lot more sense. 1 or 2 full time developers is all that GX requires to be many times better than it is. 4 or 5 would make sense. Four full-time guys would show up on the overhead sheet in Tokyo several lines below "pencils". Regardless, it is their right to do as they wish. Pirating & giving away software without thought or care is theft. The vast bulk of PLC users are professionals who make a living using the software so, by definition, we shouldn't mind paying for it. It would be nice though if it was high quality, feature rich and moderately priced though. There is not one major player in the plc industry who has good software in my opinion. A couple of the small guys (really small) have great stuff. Explain that! Longer term trials wouldn't hurt, say 6 months. Perhaps what they should do is implement a policy of allowing diskless installs by the distributors. Some distributors will actually do this as a sales technique (with nervous glances over their shoulder) in order to get you to buy the hardware. They know that you will probably be willing to pay for upgrades after the first freebie and the alternative is you walking away forever. Generally you have to appear to be a significant buyer. Unfortunately, my Mitsi distributor is not one of these. Maybe the original poster should explain why he needs free software?

[Guest Albert Fanakapan]

I have said before, on other forums, that if PLC manufacturers gave their software free or cheap with a PLC purchase, they would have a better chance of seling more PLC's. I have bought hundreds of PLC's (nearly all Mitsi or Omron) I paid a lot of money for the software and a lot of hours (which is also money) learning it. I am buying a FX1n 128 tomorrow (mitsi of course) becuase I know them and have the software. Virtually all my jobs are 'one off's' I would love to put a Seimens S7 300 or an AB for the experience and futherence of my knowlege - but I cannot justify the cost of the software. If I was given the software cheap or free with a PLC, I might fall in love with them and use them all the time. Maybe too, if the software was free, they wouldnt mind so much it being pirated. The person with the copy might also purchace that brand of PLC as he can work with that brand. And as for giving a copy of my software, which I paid £1000 for, to someone I dont know- It isnt going to happen. The PLC companies must lead the way.

[Peter Nachtwey 15]

You guys live in a dream world. The programming software costs much more to develope than than the PLC firmware and in most PLCs the firmware is the most expensive part. The PLC firmware just needs to execute about a 100 functions that are well defined. The PLC editor is an configurator, editor, communicator, and compiler. The compiler alone is a challenge. So how much do you think it cost to write a PLC editor? This is alll complicated by the fact that all of you insist on using windows instead of a platform that is more stable and does not change every two years.

[JimRowell 1]

I Beg to differ, Peter. I mean, yes, software takes an enormous effort that a lot of people do not appreciate. We all face that problem with our own customers. But keep a handle on the scale we are referencing here. Mitsubishi and others like them sell more than 1 piece of hardware each day. I know only too well what's involved in writing PC software. It's a large part of my business. I also know what's involved in writing a Mitsubishi editor/compiler (or to be more accurate, assembler which is really what Medoc and GX Dev are). I've written one to about 75% complete for List. Fully functional, far exceeds the abilities of either Medoc or GX Dev although only for the FX series and as I said, so far it's only concerned with List. It will upload and download code to the plc same as theirs. Point is, I do know what's involved. I'm just one person who's busy with other things. No one else in my office has worked on it. I don't sell millions of dollars worth of hardware each year as my core business. And by the way, the firmware on the FX series is now old. Hasn't been touched in some time. They don't work on the firmware, they don't work much on the manuals and they certainly don't work on the editor. If they even have any full time software writers they are not working on FX related projects very often. There are many well-known software houses that support packages so complex, they make GX Dev look like a utility program. Often the team of programmers doing all of the work on these projects will be anywhere from 2 to 20 people. Most of the work on Delphi is done by about 1/2 a dozen people or so (the exact number is secret but they've admitted in separate statements to more than 4 and much less than 10). Delphi is hundreds of times more complex (I mean that literally) than GX and sells for only about twice the price. The producers of it sell no hardware at all. They rely on their software for all of their income. They also have no distribution network except through their own costs and efforts. In my opinion, the cost of software development to a large established hardware producer of the scale of Mitsubishi is close enough to zero to not even count. They could set up 2 people starting over from scratch and roll out a new whiz-bang editor in 6 to 12 months on a budget of somewhere between 100 to 200 thousand dollars (esp if they contract it to someone cheap like me <grin>). Peanuts. Marketing, etc is much more costly but that is required whether they do the development or not. Let's assume a profit of 100.00 per plc (I'm being kind here), that's a full return after selling only 2000 of them if they were to give the software away for free. How long does that take? <g> To be fair, they'd have to keep the development cycle going hard for at least 1 more year to smooth it out and they should keep it going permanently so it would have to pay for itself year after year. So a small fee such as 200.00 is fine. But regardless, I still believe it's their right to do as they will.

[Guest JorgeR]

I understand that software costs money to produce, and I understand that a PLC manufacture needs to make his money back for the man hours that went into the production of the software, but what I don't understand is how the production of this software justifies a costs of thousands of dollars. How could a PLC program cost ten times more to produce than, say, microsoft office. We are being bled becuase we have to pay for the software. If microsoft ever tried to charge $2000 for a word processor, we would simply buy another brand, but we can't do that with PLCs. And the argument that the pirates are jacking the price up doesn't sit right with me either. I know 20 times more people who have boot-leg copies of microsoft office than I know people who even know what a PLC is, much less have pirated software. Further more, the few people I do know that have boot-leg software use it to train and practice, not to make money or use it at a plant or other industry. I think the major PLC manufactures would benifit from giving free trainer software away, even if it is not a working version. As log as it allows people to learn how to program the real thing.

[Crossbow 295]

Microsoft will never charge $2000 for Windows for one simple reason. Economies of scale. Perhaps 10,000 copies of PLC software are sold, where over 100 million copies of Windows are sold. When you figure in the fact that a programming software is in effect an operating system for operating on the PLCs, you have to look at this. It costs just as much to develop Windows or a large word processor suite like Word, but the cost is defrayed over 10000 times the number of copies. I want to make sure everyone understands where my opinion comes from. I, as many of you, personally think that PLC software is overpriced and in some cases, it's not well written. I think $500 would be much more reasonable than for example Modicon's Concept at nearly $5000. But the fact is, it is written, and the hours that went into it have to be paid for somewhere. If car companies gave you a car to see if you liked it, there'd be a few less of them in business. You have to spend money to make money, but there has to be some return on investment or free enterprise dies. Many vendors offer a simple solution for those 'who want to see if they like it'... It's called DEMO SOFTWARE. Try it out for 21 days, and then if you like it, then invest in it. Other companies are jumping on the 'starter kit' bandwagon. You get everything you need (software, PLC, cables, manuals) for a severely discounted price. I know Siemens and Mitsubishi are doing this, and I think it's an excellent idea. I'm going to shut up now, and hope everyone at least looks at this and considers it. I mean if I wrote software, I'd be pissed that people think my time is worth nothing. I used to get pissed when my former bosses (when I did computer network service) wanted to discount my time because 'I was new at it, and someone who'd been doing it longer would have done it quicker'. Time is money people.

[antht 0]

Excellent Stuff Looks like my original reply got a few people going. I am actually starting to come round to the idea of free software and admittedly I maybe was a bit hasty with my first reply but this must be one of the best discussions seen for a long time.

[kumar 0]

Yes you can get it. GX Developer for Mitsuishi s7 200 for Siemens Mail to xxxxxxx@xxxxxxxx.com Edited by Jay Anthony Please conduct any transaction like above through Private messaging.

[Guest Emgr.amjad haroon]

...You guys live in a dream world. The programming software costs much more to develope than than the PLC firmware and in most PLCs the firmware is the most expensive part. The PLC firmware just needs to execute about a 100 functions that are well defined. The PLC editor is an configurator, editor, communicator, and compiler. The compiler alone is a challenge. So how much do you think it cost to write a PLC editor? This is alll complicated by the fact that all of you insist on using windows instead of a platform that is more stable and does not change every two years.

[panic mode 246]

I would like to see PLC software run on alternative OSs but so far i haven't seen one package to work on anything else except DOS. Maybe someone with plenty of time on his/her hands has figured out how to make it work with emulator but this is not what I have in mind. I would like to see manufacturers support it...

[Crossbow 295]

Actually, Siemens offer programming software for their LOGO logic relays for both Mac and Linux as well as Windows. Their software is entirely Java based so it was easy for them to port to other operating systems.

[silva.foxx 0]

All the big name players of PLC software should club together and create the Open Programming Language to standardise PLC software. They done it for Profibus. If Formula 1 motor racing all made cars to the exact same spec then we would see the quality of the best drivers.

[Guest Franz]

- You can run MEDOC very nicely in a DOS Window of OS/2. - There was also a native version of MEDOC for OS/2 Maybe you can get it from Beijers - You can run GX-Developer in a Virtual PC (Connectix) on OS/2