Book Image

Mastering PLC Programming

By : Mason White
Book Image

Mastering PLC Programming

By: Mason White

Overview of this book

Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a new feature of PLC programming that has taken the automation world by storm. This book provides you with the necessary skills to succeed in the modern automation programming environment. The book is designed in a way to take you through advanced topics such as OOP design, SOLID programming, the software development lifecycle (SDLC), library design, HMI development, general software engineering practices, and more. To hone your programming skills, each chapter has a simulated real-world project that’ll enable you to apply the skills you’ve learned. In all, this book not only covers complex PLC programming topics, but it also removes the financial barrier that comes with most books as all examples utilize free software. This means that to follow along, you DO NOT need to purchase any PLC hardware or software. By the end of this PLC book, you will have what it takes to create long-lasting codebases for any modern automation project.
Table of Contents (25 chapters)
1
Part 1 – An Introduction to Advanced PLC Programming
6
Part 2 – Modularity and Objects
10
Part 3 – Software Engineering for PLCs
14
Part 4 – HMIs and Alarms
19
Part 5 – Final Project and Thoughts

Building custom libraries

By exploring third-party libraries and the guiding principles of developing libraries, we have touched on building custom libraries. So, before we move on and attempt to build a working math library, we are going to develop a simple library using some of the principles we have learned so far in the book.

Requirements

For this project, we are going to build a simple library that can perform the following functions:

  • Home the motor
  • Turn the motor on
  • Turn the motor off
  • Stop the motor
  • Position the motor

In short, this will be a very simple library and will not require complex architecture. For a library as simple as this, we don’t have to worry too much about complexities such as design patterns; however, the facade pattern may help a little. Turning the motor off and on will be a bit more complex as we will need to automatically zero the motor out, which means that the homing function will also need to zero out. Let...