PLC or Arduino or Microcontroller

hi,
i have a confusion. i work with PLC and i love ladder programming. but the problem is that in different plc brand uses different software and when u learn one brand and there comes one new model in market then again u have to learn that new software.

in engineering point of view which should i learn as a electrical engineer
PLC or Arduino or Microcontroller?

thanks

It depends on where you end up. As far as my experience goes, the situation is like this:

• in industry, for low number of machines produced: PLC
• large number machines produced, e.g. in consumer electronics: microprocessor or microcontroller
• hobby projects: Arduino

This situation may however change with time or with geographic location.

Again as far as my experience goes: in most companies they tend to stick to a limited number of PLC systems. Every system used needs spares, which cost money to purchase, but also to store. Every system needs, as you already mentioned, the software to develop the programs, to do troubleshooting and so on. But every software also needs investment in training the people to use it.

The biggest problem for beginners is to choose the right system. The key to making the right choice is to look around in the companies over there. If you're able to work as apprentice in a company, this gives you a strong advantage. There's also a geographic dependency: Allen-Bradley is very strong in USA, Siemens over here in Europe and Omron in Japan and Australia, to name a few.

Start learning arduino, as it is cheap, and there are existing ladder porgrams for hobby on arduino.
then start learning PLC (siemens or codesys)