TIA Portal

[onraed 0]

At my work I heard Siemens is changing to TIA portal to replace the existing Step 7 The hardware will be at end of life in about two years. I'm a programmer for about 10 years, in different brands and area's. In the last years I've had occasionally a training of a new brand, mostly I learned it by doing it. Is it mandatory or advisable to follow a TIA training or can I wing it.

[Shiner 2]

If you look at the components of TIA portal, specifically their service packs, you will notice that there are upgrades for WinCC and Step 7 respectively. I am not a big code guy, but it appears to me that the TIA portal is merely an integrating platform to mesh multiple platforms together. If you are versed in the originals, the learning curve for this is fairly short. Instead of setting up paths between 2 separate programs for HMI and PLC for instance, you simply point and click from one device to anothers' port and they are put on the same network. Once in the same network, when accessing the HMI you can select tags out of its associated PLC directly. I think it is fairly intuitive, although bulky and slow to boot and run on my Dell Latitude E5500. I too have been interested in hearing other people comment about how they feel about this software.

[jrw 12]

There's some decent videos on YouTube too This is where step7 is heading so I would recommend learning it

[Mitsu 2]

I haven't done any real plc projects yet in TIA Portal but i have been converting some of my existing projects in order to have a feel of the new software. And my first impressions are really positive. A lot of the little annoyances that were present in Step 7 v5 or earlier have been solved. Can't say i'm very fond of the user interface which i think is a bit messy (it is based on WinCC Flexible) and the program is rather slow on anything but the fatest pc's. But i assume this will get better over time. It definately feels like an early version in some ways though. Some things i like (off the top of my head): - you can subdivide your program (FB's, FC's, OB's, DB's) into folders and subfolders. Also, udt's are now in a separate category and so are the system fc's/fb's - technology objects + full support for pid monitoring and tuning - multiple symbol lists possible - symbol list only has real symbols in it (the symbolic name of OB's, FC's and FB's aren't in there anymore). - lots of little improvements/refinements in the ladder editor - you can save a fc/fb which has an error in it (which was not possible with previous versions) - completely revamped structured text: there is no fc/source separation anymore and the editor has been greatly improved (e.g. IF, FOR NEXT statements can be expanded/collapsed,...) - datablocks don't have the dataview anymore (much more simple now to monitor) - when going online, there is always a visual indication of which db's/fc's/... are different online/offline - full library support - a lot of small annoyances from earlier versions solved As for training, i guess it depends on what you prefer. I usually print out the manual and start from there, discovering the program step by step. But a training can be useful too.