Help With Lm6 Conversion

[Rammie 0]

I am currently working a project involving translating logic written in LM series 6 format to Cimplicity Machine edition format. I was wondering if there is a software conversion utility available to convert Series Six programs directly to cimplicity or even LM90 so that I can later on import the LM90 program to Cimplicity Machine Edition. Currently I trying to translate the program manually and its taking me a long time. Please let me know about it. Thanks.

[Steve Bailey 118]

As far as I know, there is nothing commercially available. I'm led to understand that the GE Engineering Services group had a translation package that they used when they had projects to convert from Series 6 to Series 90. This was strictly for internal use and was not available to the general public. In my opinion, translators are of limited usefulness. They are like using the dictionary to translate from one language to another. You can translate every word correctly and still miss the meaning. Furthermore, there may be better ways of doing something in the Series 90 instruction set than what a literal translation will come up with. There are a few constructions that get used quite frequently in LM6 that are meaningless in a Series 90. For example, can you recognize the ladder logic that reads an analog input module and places the data from each channel into register memory (and for moving register data to analog outputs)? It's completely unnecessary to translate it because the Series 90 does it automatically. Does your program have a lot of [A SUBX B = C] instructions with logic following them? Do you know what that implies? How about DPREQ or WINDOW instructions? Any Genius I/O? etc, etc, etc. It's probably easier in the long run to just slog through the process by hand. If you have questions about what some rungs of LM6 ladder logic might be doing, post it here and I'll try to help. BTW, when I say Series 90, I mean to include VersaMax and PAC Systems PLCs as well.

[Tank_Harvey 0]

I concur with what Steve has been saying. GE does have a conversion package but as yet I have not seen the actual software. To date it has been hand us the software and we will convert it - to date I have not got them to convert a program for me. I have converted 6 or so LM6 to LM90 (90-70's) programs. It’s not hard to do your self if you can master the use of Teach Key files in LM90 and a bit of access to help build any standard drive blocks. PAC would make it easer using the toolchest. Any How My point I wanted to make is by the time you have translated the memory map into the appropriate location for the new program (eg This output chain 2 should be relocated to %M1000 to %M2000, ect ect) and decided on a correct subroutine structure with updated standard drive logic. I hove found that most of the software changes anyway - < gets tweaked.>. Also you may find a lot of redundant software as well (like Steve was saying). For instance in one conversion their was a subroutine being called in LM6 that was a user programmed PID function that was a few hundred rungs long. This was replaced with one instruction in the 90-70.

[Rammie 0]

I have converted most of the logic manually. I understood most of the logic and translated it except for couple of these rungs - ----[A MOVE B]------[sRC-TO-TABLE LEN]-------- Any idea what the above rung does and any way to simplify it. Another instruction i'm trying to figure out is [bIT SET MATRIX LEN]. Any help with the above rungs and instructions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[Steve Bailey 118]

The [sRC-TO-TABLE LEN] is an indexed move. The data in the SRC (source) register is moved to one of n registers where n in the value of the LEN parameter. The register address under the TABLE parameter is the starting address of n + 1 registers. It is the pointer. If it contains a value of zero when the function is executed, the data from SRC is copied to the first register in the table (the next higher address above the pointer). If the pointer contains 1, the data from SRC is copied to the second register in the table, etc. This instruction is used in the decoding data from an analog input module. [bIT SET MATRIX LEN] MATRIX defines the starting address of an array of bits. LEN is the number of 16-bit words in the array. BIT defines which bit in the array to turn on.

[RussB 22]

For the benefit of non-GE Fanuc programmers. The Array Move (ARR_MOV) function in the 90-70 (or 90-30) will mimic this.

[Mallen23 0]

There is a company that makes a conversion utility called Softech. The software is pretty accurate, but does not convert a couple of the instructions. It is very good for discrete applications. I have used it many times for discrete and process type applications with a lot of success.