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

Summary

This chapter was a crash course on HMI design practices. HMI design and development is a very important concept, as a bad HMI will sink a project very easily. Overall, by mastering the concepts such as screen navigation, blinking, colors, grouping, and so on, your HMIs will be easy to use and will allow your project to survive the test of time.

In this chapter, we have also explored error indications. Changing control colors and blinking is an excellent way to handle some issues. However, in automation engineering, we want to throw a true error in the event of an issue. Alarms are very closely tied in with HMI design; as such, our next chapter will be dedicated to exploring proper alarm usage and layouts.