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chrisbramall

Siemens plc system

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I have just been informed today that United Utilities ( North West Water) are changing there framework Supplier for PLC hardware from Allan Bradley to Siemens. Has anyone had any good / bad experiences with siemens PLC either on Hardware or Software Best Regards Chris Bramall

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Way to go, United Utilities !   The Germans have never steered you wrong !

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Don't you mean way to go accountants, they have just spent the last 5 years standardizing on one PLC manufacturer to minimize costs and allow greater compatability and now all of us who do work for them have to go out and buy new software and learn the vagaries of another PLC manufacturer when we've just about ironed out all the kinks with the Allan Bradley Gear.

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in fact i do, and i can tell you it´s very simple work whith a siemens s7.. if you anderstand electricity, you´ll see, it´s very simple, you just have to think like when you plug irons( i think the word is irons!!!!!) sory about my english but im not very good to rhight this thing

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Have you used the siemens for very much. We are going to be using them on pumping stations and large water treatment works both as stand alone units and as networked systems that are far far more complex than just pluging in an iron !!!!!

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Well we've got our first contract using the siemens and post back with any majour differences (for better or worse ) when compared to the Allen Bradley / Omron  /Mitsubishi.

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well I thought the Allan Bradly site was hard to find the right document on the siemens is murder.  

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I've done Allen Bradley,TI,Modicon and Omron....anything special about Seimens???   Or where can I go to find anymore about their stuff???

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Please check out this site http://www.sea.siemens.com/

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If you have used both Omron and AB, and have had success programming, then you should have no problem with the siemans PLC.  I have gone back and forth between the 3 Manufacturers and the logic is the same, but implemented with different instructions.  If you have any other questions please ask.  :-8

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I'm very good programmer in siemens S7 and S5, it's you have a specify question feel free to mek to me

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I have been working with Siemens for.............. well a long time. I have worked with all brands. Siemens is my favorite.

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I am a x SIEMENS instructor. SIEMENS is more complicated than AB. But there are more tools available in SIEMENS. If you go from AB to S7 you will ask why you need all of these extra tools. If you go from S7 to AB you will ask why can't I do that. jd

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I've been working with siemens and allen bradley. So far Siemens is more stable than allen bradley in hardware and software aspects...

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I've worked with Omron, Modicon, Mitsubishi, and Siemens (touched an AB once or twice too). So far, Siemens has really nice software as well as a good product. I'd pick it over Modicon or AB any day of the week. But my Siemens experience is all low end (S7-200) so I can't speak for the higher end software. People have told me it's far less confusing than AB ControlLogix programming.

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I am currently working with both Allen-Bradley Control-Logix and Siemens S7 315-DP processors. The Siemens PLCs are being used with Siemens Sinaut Telecontrol software. My biggest complaint about Siemens is the Sinaut software. It is easy to write Functions and Function Blocks with S7 but it can be tough to debug if you are calling the function more than 1 time. A-B does not support user defined functions in RSLogix5000. One of my biggest gripes with Siemens is the lack of support in WinCC and ProTools for the PLC native datatypes like S5Time. Heck when you put in the Sinaut software there is no support to transfer a Real number to the SCADA. S7 is also a disk hog. It takes 250+ MB. My PLC project 30 PLC programs and 3 WinCC SCADA Computers in a Sinaut TeleControl System is almost 100 MB. Luckily it compresses down to 12MB using the Siematic Manager Archive Tools. I think I am going to set up a table contrasting S7 and RSLogix5000.

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I litte tip. If you want to debug Functionblocks that are called more than one time first open the fc,fb or ob that calles the block that you want to monitor online. Then choose the menu debug and select test operation. Now you can right click on the fc or fb that you want to debug and choose called block --> Monitor with call up path. Now the fc,fb is monitored with the in/out parameters in the calling block. This nice feature dosent work with really old s7 cpu´s, there you have to write in the call up parameters yourself. Another tip if your project is getting big is to choose save as and click the "With reorganization" this can save plenty of disk space. And regarding the simatic Archive feature what it does i simply packing the project using standard archiving tools. Pkzip is predefined but you can change this to example winzip or arj in the Options/customize/archiving menu. Edited by Klaus

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Regarding the datatype support in Protool! Edited by Klaus

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Thank you for introducing yourself to us. We must have missed a lot not knowing you before. <>

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Well i've just upgraded to the V5.2 of the software and alot of the gripes of things that were missing from changing from RSLogix have been sorted, we'll have to see how it pans outin the long term.

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Except for the cost ( you have to pay for everything , software , extra license, extra software etc) I think Siemens are doing their homework ... their latest ... integrated automation is coming of age and one person can configure/program/network etc a complete project 'without' to much problems. If you do have a problem , you can find almost all the answers on the siemens website ( ok .. you need patience but the website is better than their hotline) Greetings SucceS Eric

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I've work with Siemens, AB, Omron, Aromat and the best plc is Siemens. Not always easy but very powerfull. AB with the Logix familly is good to but I still to maintain "Siemens is #1". Thanks

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The company for which I have worked for the last 10 years is a platform independent software/engineering firm. We do not sell any hardware, so we can be relatively unbiased when recommending PLC's. We have worked extensively with all of the major PLC brands. In my opinion Siemens is the most complicated, yet the most powerful and capable. It took me much longer to become an expert at Siemens, but now the benefits are easily quantifiable. We have found that we can complete most projects on a Siemens platform in about 50-75% of the time it would take on an AB platform. We heavily rely on the use of reusable Function Blocks thus allowing us to program PLC's in an object-oriented manner. Siemens supports reusable function blocks in a way that is superior to AB. For this reason alone, I prefer Siemens over AB. Here is a blog I wrote about the advantages of reusable Function Blocks: IEC-61131-3-Function-Blocks--Unleash-the-Power

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Hi, One thing i like about AB is the software is very user friendly and easy to handle. When my first time with Siemens, i thought it going to be like Hell!! But it become more easy after that. And the siemens support is good. There is one time when they call me direcly to rectify my programming even our distance is 12 hour by flight!! And i get a free S7 License replacement just after few days my hard disk is damage!

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