RSLogix Program

Hi, I was wondering if anyone knows where I could find the source to a program that reads RSLogix program files. I am trying to make a PLC simulator specifically tailored to the work I do. To do this, I am going to need to read program files. Does anyone have any suggestions?

But at what cost?

The real question is: what is your time worth, and when do you want this by?

The RSLogix .rsp and .rss files are proprietary data files, and while I'm sure that with time, you could reverse engineer them, I'm not sure that it's worth the effort.

An alternative would be to export your RSLogix file to a .PC5 or .SLC library file types, which is plain vanilla ASCII (Example: XIC B3/0 OTE O:2/1. The values in all the data tables are included. You might have more success there.

Alternatively, you can buy Rockwell's PLC emulator RSEmulate5 and/or RSEmulate500. These will execute the PLC code (well, everything except for MSG, block transfers, and PID instructions), and allow for interface with RSLinx. You can even do on-line monitoring (but not online programming - which is a PITA).

Since you can communicate these virtual PLCs with RSLinx, you can test your HMI software (provided it uses RSLinx as it's communication engine), and even use Excel (or better) to feed values into/out of the emulated PLC.

My personal preference is to write ladder logic in the PLC that simulates the real world, writing to input addresses based on the condition of the outputs. This code works in either a real PLC (we have some spares around the office) or an Emulated one.