siemens simatic s7

I have just started in a new plant and am working to figure out a program that I had to upload off of the plc as there was no copy of it else where. I was able to enter the IO descriptions easy enough but am now trying to go through and decipher what the internal bits are used for. While working at this I have found several Networks that I can not change from STL to Ladder logic. I have tried to use the comand under the "view" menu and it will change the rest of the function block but not certain networks. I have been programing allan Bradley Plc's for a few years but this is my first real encounter with one of these over priced boat anchors...@#$%)*^%T^?":

Tyler,

the fact that the software is unable to show a network in ladder, is because the programmer did not intend to show that network in ladder. Mostly this is done to save some memory space, but I personally do think of it as poor programming. Sorry there's no way to help you further, apart from re-engineering the program. But for that goal to obtai, I should see the whole program and reserve enough time to do the job .

Kind regards,

To add to jvdcande's comments, there are some STL statements that don't translate to ladder. You just can't use certain instructions in ladder that you can with STL. If the original programmer decided to use these instructions, STL is all they could use.
And, like jvdcande said, you can make math more compact in STL than you can in ladder. For example, an equation like:
E = (A+B)/C
in ladder would require separate add and divide blocks and would convet to STL looking something like:

L A
L B
+R
T D
L D
L C
/R
T E

The same equation using STL could be boiled down to:
L A
L B
+R
L C
/R
T E

You can operate directly on values in the accumulator with STL. Unfortunately, the second example will never convert to ladder because Step 7 doesn't recognize the STL grouping as a vbalid ladder instruction.

So I don't think the original programmer wa strying to make you life difficult (although he may have). He was just using the tools available to him to the best use he knew how.

Keith