Grafcet

I’ve found SFCEDIT by http://stephane.dimeglio.free.fr/sfcedit/en/ a simple and reasonably priced Grafcet Editor for planning and documenting sequences.

But the documentation is bad, and I have some questions. That is general Grafcet questions, but I find it hard to find information except in French language. (Nothing against the language, except it’s all French to me.)

What is the difference between a Task Step, a Macro Step and an Enclosing Step? What is an Enclosing Initial Step? What is a Forcing Order?

a task is done until the transition is true (or time ends)
a Macro is a subroutine call which can be in any language (for PLC)
an enclosing step has more steps in one step, almost same as macro
enclosing initial is a start with more steps in it.
the forcing order is the way the numbers are used, but the sequence stays as in the graph.
another SFC is within Codesys (PLC type) and is free to use.
What PLC would you like to use?

Not what you asked, but maybe you would want an alternative because the free version doesn't allow you to save or take screenshots, although there are ways around that.

I kinda like SFCedit as well, especially the keyboard shortcuts like F3 and so on makes drawing flowcharts really fast. But €70 seems a bit steep for me for something that only does that.

There are free options like yed, Dia, dynamic draw, google draw.

Also Microsoft word and festo can make flow charts. If you have Siemens Tia you can also use Graph on the 1500 series of PLC.