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vanilla_gorilla

RSEmulate, anyone

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I was considering taking a look at RSEmulate to help reduce debugging time offline. Anyone currently using it ?? Opinions ? Worth the money ?? Any drawbacks or restrictions ? Thx

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i have used it once i didnt have a lot of time with it but it seemed to trick rslogix into thinking that it was online with a real plc. the only thing i couldnt figure out was how to manipulate the inputs with out forcing them. but anyhow it may be a useful tool.......ok software guru's chime in and save the day now

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When I had emulate it was nice for small programs or little sections, but writing all those "debug" files and keeping it all straight, was like writing the program twice. It worked well as long as your assumptions about the real world works are solid. But when you forget something like liquid slosh in an unbaffled tank and your emulator program runs great but the real world messes up you have to use your brain just the same. I think it might make a great sales gimmick, but not a real time saver in my situation.

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I don't know how much Emulate is and have never used it but I have found purchasing PLCs you use frequently when you can is a tremendous savings. It really cuts the development time down. But it takes years to gather the parts unless you have an unlimited budget.

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I agree with TW on the accumulate PLC's if you can. After All I spent 30K my first day on a job six years ago for one of each plc involved in a mojor project to create a "lab" for training and self learning.

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And I bet you if you added it up the time and money it saved you it added up to 30K, the interest of the 6 years, plus a nice little return

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I would not run a maintenance department or major project without a training lab ever again.

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Me neither, our startups and upgrades go tremendously smoother. It has paid for itself time and time again

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I have RS Logix 500 Emulate installed and even used on rare occasion. 5000 emulator I didn't even try yet so I can express my view on 500 version only: In my opinion, this emulator is just waste of time, it has value if one wants to test instruction, not a whole program. Main drawback is lack of "online" editing and some sort of control panel or button bar. If I'm going to emulate program I would like to use control panel or button bar with assigned I/Os or addresses for simulating real world events, i want debugging interface and fast way of changing logic. To be honest, there is nothing to be emulated in my programs. It's all same old proven logic used over and over... And it's very simple logic, meant to be maintained or supported by others so no need to emulate. Anything complex goes into separate routine and it's tested on real hardware, I learned not to trust emulators long ago. If someone wants to learn to program PLC, I would strongly recommend using real PLC instead of emulator. This way they will get hang of communication setup too and be able to do something with it. If someone wants to develop project before purchased hardware arrives, use spare PLC or get a loaner from distributor. If they don't have one to loan, change distributor.

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I find the RSEmulate 5000 much more useful. It has online editing and I can be used to test/debug HMI/SCADA programs without having to have a rack, power supply and controller with you. The Emulate 500 is not nearly as good.

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hello sir, it has its own advantage and disadvantage, disadvantages 1.we cant get real time values 2.impossible to force corresponding i/o for big program 3.u cant check communication error , it has seperate driver in RS linx advantage 1.we can simulate with plc with any require configuration 2.we can check MMI program errors 3.time reduced to check small programs i hav left many but its came to my mind regards sathya

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I have had a lot of success using RSEmulate 500 with RSView Studio to test our ME HMI. While the emulator doesn't do everything (PIDs don't run, for example) it does work well when testing your HMI to make sure all of the tags point to the right place, all of the messages turn on and off as they should, etc. It seemed a little clunky to set up the first time, but now that I've used it a lot it isn't nearly as bad. I guess that goes for just about any software!

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I have just finished a big project (ControlLogix, 11 racks of IO, >150 motors, 40 PowerFlex70's on DV - Program printed out at just shy of 3000 pages, plus 6 WonderWare nodes) and used Emulate5k extensively during the development. Initially, I had some config problems, but those were quickly resolved. The biggest hurdle is how to "emulate" the program. I wrote additional logic to generate the "proof" signal whenever the output came on. Granted, most of my system is discrete, so it is fairly easy. And it's even easier if you'll use Excel to generate that code for you. All of those rungs will be the same format -- XIC(output_bit)OTE(input_proof_bit) -- so if you have all of your inputs/outputs in a spreadsheet, this is very quick. I literally generated this code in a few seconds because I spent a little time up front to take advantage of this. That all said, when it came time to start up the physical system, I knew my logic would work if all of the physical electrical installation was right. That eliminated alot of problems during startup and quickly accelerated the process. The only things I had to change during install was to set timers because I had no basis for evaluating them up until that time. In the past, I've done the same thing with the 500 emulator. Never have tried the PLC5 emulator. I'd love to be able to have a whole lab full of each of the PLC's that I'm obligated to support in my company, but I can't. This is one tool that was definitely worth the money! Edited by OZEE

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