Siemens S7

Thanks to those who replied, I took your advice and obtained step by step and also found some other info on PLCs. Im in the difficult position of having to produce a basic manual for the S7 with only a similar manual based on the S5, and all this information from the siemens site and CD. Any suggestions how to structure such a document. The previous document for S5 covered Pg710 programmer, backing and restoring programs, inputs and outputs, programming blocks before going onto programming. Any help, or pointers appreciated.

__________________________

The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success

Hello Paul;
Do you use Step 7? If so, a few basic manuals on the programming and configuring S7 PLCs have been installed on your computer (Start-->xx--> Simatic-->Documentation); here are a few titles:

STEP 7 - Working with STEP 7
STEP 7 - Programming with STEP 7
STEP 7 - Configuring Hardware with STEP 7
STEP 7 - Ladder Logic for S7-300 and S7-400

There are more, but these should give you a good start.

If you don't have Step 7, you can download these files from the Siemens support website:

http://www4.ad.siemens.de/WW/llisapi.dll?func=cslib.csinfo&lang=en&objID=4000024

Hope this helps,
Daniel Chartier

I dont have step7 yet. Im a summer student, and my project is to create this manual, though I have no prior knowledge on PLCs of any kind and have spend the last three weeks reading about them and their capabilities and seeing them working in the plant. Thus, after much reading I hope to understand enough to write a basic guide.

wglespaul,

Yours is not an easy task, but you should do fine.

Question: Are you working in a plant-floor environment? If you are, consider starting by asking your more experienced technicians what they would like to see out of such a document. After all, they are the ones who need to use it.

Too often, a manual focusses on things the end-user does not need to know and leaves out the stuff he does.

For example: If a technician is responsible for doing a program back-up, how does he need to start? What programming device does he need and what cabling? Which end of the cable hooks to the programming device and which to the PLC? Where exactly on the PLC does he connect it? Can he safely connect while the machine is in operation? Can the back up itself be done while the machine is running?

A technique you might want to use is to tag along with one of these guys (the more open the technician, the better - happy to explain each step he is taking and why) so that you can identify just what kinds of information are important.

Steve