Book Image

PLC and HMI Development with Siemens TIA Portal

By : Liam Bee
Book Image

PLC and HMI Development with Siemens TIA Portal

By: Liam Bee

Overview of this book

With automation requirements on the rise, Siemens’ TIA Portal development environment is almost a necessity for any automation engineer. The Totally Integrated Automation (TIA) environment helps seamlessly integrate all things automation, from PLC hardware and software design to HMI development. This book helps you understand the tools available in the TIA toolbox and shows you how to write code effectively. The book begins by introducing you to the TIA environment, covering the layout and tools available. Once you’ve got to grips with the environment, you’ll find out how to create hardware to write programs against, including adding IO modules and assigning memory for input and output. Next, you'll develop logic in all of the languages that TIA Portal offers, such as Ladder, Function Block Diagram, and Structured Text (SCL) (note that Statement List is not covered as a deprecated language), as well as the newest language, Cause and Effect (CEM). You’ll also discover how to store standard code in libraries, creating a version control system that is easy to manage and aids standard design. Finally, following the PLC design chapters, you’ll learn how to develop HMI applications in TIA Portal’s latest unified hardware. By the end of the book, you'll be well equipped to use all of the features that TIA Portal V17 offers.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
1
Section 1 – The TIA Portal – Project Environment
5
Section 2 – TIA Portal – Languages, Structures, and Configurations
11
Section 3 – TIA Portal – HMI Development
16
Section 4 – TIA Portal – Deployment and Best Practices

Chapter 3: Structures and User-Defined Types

This chapter explores how to create, utilize, and deploy structures as structs and User-Defined Types (UDTs) effectively in a TIA Portal project. UDTs are the most underutilized tool in PLC programming and are extremely efficient and provide the rigid data structure required for asset-based programming. This chapter also expands on previously learned information about interfaces and how they affect data usage in logic objects.

After reading this chapter, a programmer should feel comfortable with both structs and UDTs in TIA Portal and have enough knowledge to do the following:

  • Add structs and UDTs to a project.
  • Know where UDTs are stored in a project.
  • Know the differences between structs and UDTs.
  • Know how to simplify interfaces to program blocks.
  • Know of potential drawbacks of using structs/UDTs and how to mitigate or overcome the issues that arise.

The following topics will be covered in this chapter:

...