Sharing S7 projects. What must I do?

I just received a S7 project from Asim in Croatia and I can't open it. I get a message saying that my regional settings must be set to Croatian.

WHAT KIND OF SIEMENS NONSENSE IS THIS?

So I set my regional settings to Croatian and I still can't open the project. I rebooted and looked at my settings and it says the regional settings are Croation. What more must I do to look at file from a different region?

It is this kind of BS that keeps me from doing more with the S7. I spend more time fighting it that programming with it.

Now what? How can people easily share Step7 projects or files between different countries. I am sure the European PLC programmers have this worked out. There must be a way to change the Step7 project to English so I work on it. How do people with two different regional settings work on the same project?

Now I can see why there isn't a Siemens User Group. Siemens has its own tower of Babel.

BTW, Asim and I are working on a SOPDT simulator so that the S7 programmers will be able to simulations like what Gerry did in with his Control Logix the Advanced Control thread.

Hello Peter;

One way to get around this limitation is to generate a source (awl file) from the serbo-croatian machine, and compile it on your own PC, in Step 7. It compiles with all your PC's settings.

Of course this way you onl;y get the program code, not the hardware configuration, you will need to generate that yourself in your S7 project.

Hope this helps,
Daniel Chartier

Try getting him to save it as language neutral

http://support.automation.siemens.com/WW/view/en/22635865

I've done exactly as described on Siemens web site. We'll wait and see if Peter will be able to open it without problem. I saved with option "language neutral", changed my windows settings to English-US and saved project again. I think there shouldn't be problem to open it now.

BTW, I'm from Bosnia and Herzegovina, but my Windows settings are Croation, because old habits die hard from time of Win98 when there was not option for Bosnian settings which are basically same as Croatian.

P.S. I think it is finally time to add Bosnian flag in profile options...

PERSONALLY, it is nice to see someone else go ballistic. For a guy like me it is especially gratifying when someone like Peter displays his humanity per se.

This was fun...more, more, more.....

rsdoran said:

PERSONALLY, it is nice to see someone else go ballistic. For a guy like me it is especially gratifying when someone like Peter displays his humanity per se.
This was fun...more, more, more.....

Click to expand...

I'm not sure I understand what you mean rsdoran?
I agree that Peter is a great humanist

I was able to open the file but.....

I couldn't edit it.

I have sent a Scilab version of the SimSOPDT to Asim. His version is close but he was having troubles with simulatiing the dead time. He should be able to get his version working quickly now.

The Scilab version is attached. I have an InitSOPDT and a SimSOPDT function. I would like to see the two functions share the same DB so that one the InitSOPDT is called when the program starts up and SimSOPDT is called from an interrupt OB. I think Asim is using OB35. The data I declared global in Scilab should be in a DB. I recommended that Asim fix the DTQ or dead time queue to 300 entries. This will allow one to simulate a dead time of 5 minutes with 1 second udpates. I and sure individual S7 programmers will modify the DTQ length to fit their needs.

PERSONALLY, it is nice to see someone else go ballistic. For a guy like me it is especially gratifying when someone like Peter displays his humanity per se.

Click to expand...

It is easy for me to go ballistic when I have to deal with other peoples **** or twisted minds. Yes, there are times when my type AAA personality really shines.

The problem is that I have wasted more time with the Step7 language barriers and its write protection now than it took me to write the SOPDT program. These problems have NOTHING to do with programming. Anyone can see I just cut and pasted some code from the AutoTune.sci file.

Now you tell me why I should want to use a tool where the tool is the biggest obstacle? Now you know why I don't like to do S7 programming. STL and SCL are fine. The S7 PLC is fine. It is the STEP7 that winds up my integrator to saturation.

The humanity part shows up when I take the path of least resistance. I would actually use the S7 more if it had trends like the Rockwell software, how can I show how well the SOPDT works? Gerry was able to make a nice example in the Advanced Control thread using the RSLogix. The path of least resistance is Rockwell or not use PLCs at all and use Scilab.

I am afraid to tell you that this problem is not universally a Siemens problem -
A year or so ago I ran up a big Rockwell job here in Thailand - and the hairbrained IT clerk updated windows XP to Thai - you cannot imagine the destruction this caused - there was no need for him to do it .

Suspect that the Croats used comments with strange characters in them (accents etc) - causing this problem - it is almost certainly not a problem caused by Siemens .

I have never had any trouble opening up software from overseas - but then the comments have always been with accents , unless the language was supported during the S7 install .

I got around the read only problem.

Apparently it makes a difference where the project is when I try to edit it. When I copied it to the Step7\S7Proj directory I found I could open the project there and edit it. The project was in a directory shared by my host systems and the VMWare virtual machine where I have all my PLC programs.

I have the file edited. I just need to configure and write a test project to test the SOPDT FB.

This is actually the first time I have used my SCL. The editing and compiling seems easy enough.

I am stuck again

I need to add a call to FB2 in OB1. I can create a rung, add and emptry box, enter FB2 and I get FB 2 but none of the inputs or outputs are assigned and the DB is not assigend. At this point I can't type anything without Step7 giving this error..

S7KAFAPX

Member not found.

DB2 should be assigned to FB2. I should be able to enter DB2 but it will not let me. There must be a magic incantation or secret handshake that I don't know.

Attached is what I have so far. Step7 would not let me save away the project with FB2 only partially installed.

Note, FB2 should go into an interrupt OB but for debugging purposes I was going to activate FB2 using a couple digital inputs from my simulator card.

I don't know how or why you guys put up with this.

I haven't taken a look at your project, but I can help you with FB2.

First, if DB2 already exists, delete it. Then open the symbols table and delete the symbol for it too.

Then, open the block you want to call FB2 from and enter this:

CALL FB2, DB2.

It will tell you that DB2 doesn't exist, and if you want it to be automatically generated. It will then create it based on the variables you defined in FB2, and all will be well.

If you don't want to delete DB2, try the same thing with another DB just to see if the DB is generated. We'll go from there.

Edit: I opened your project, and the above steps worked fine. Can you give it another try?

S7Guy

That helped. I think deleting the old db2 was the trick but I can now see that my step7 installation is messed up. I can work in STL but the ladder gives me the member not found error for every character that I type. Eventually I can get an entry made but it takes for ever and is frustrating. I have had it.

Problem after problem after problem. I am going to uninstall my Step7 and reinstall it.

If You Do .....

QUESTION:
How can I completely deinstall STEP 7?

ANSWER:
It is principally recommended to deinstall the complete Siemens-Software and to reinstall it after the deinstallation of step 7.
The following text describes the procedure.

Warning:
In the deinstallation described the complete SIEMENS folder and all Registry entries of the Siemens software installed on your computer are deleted. If this folder still contains projects, then you must copy them to another directory using the SIMATIC Manager function "File > Save As&". You can also save the data in another directory or on a different drive using the function "File > Archive". Do not copy or move the projects using the Windows Explorer. Still save your GSD files from the directory "<<DRIVE:>>\Siemens\Step7\S7data\gsd\".

Important:
First transfer your authorizations to the authorization floppy disk provided for this.

1. Start the "Software" via "Start > Settings > Control Panel" and deinstall all the SIMATIC applications.
2. Then restart the PG / PC.
3. Start the Registry editor via the menu command "Start > Run".

1. Enter "regedit" and acknowledge with "OK". The Registry editor now starts.
2. Open the directory "HKEY_CURRENT_USER > Software". There you will find the "SIEMENS" subdirectory.

1. Select this directory and delete it.
2. Open the directory "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE". In it you will find another "SIEMENS" directory.

1. Select this directory too and delete it. Then the Registry is free of all SIEMENS entries.
2. Close the Registry editor and then delete the complete Siemens directory (<<DRIVE:>>\Siemens) as well as all the S7 files in the Windows system directory. For this you open the Search mask via "Start > Search > Files/Folders..." and search for all the "S7*.*" files.
3. Delete the SIMATIC folder in the start menu.
4. Delete the data file "simatic.cfg", located in the Windows-directory (e.g. C:\WinNT oder C.\Win98).
   Note:
   With new operating systems it might be the case, that this file is already no longer there.
5. Delete the data files C:\RASETU*.*
6. Search the data file "citamis.str" via "Start>Search>Files/Folders in the windows directory (e.g. C:\WinNT C.\Win98) and delete this file
7. Additionally, empty the recycle bin.
8. The deinstallation has been completed then.

It should not be necessary to delete a DB - the software should note the time stamp instance and highlight the DB call in red - 5.3 was notorious for not detecting time stamp changes . It is certainly not necessary to delete the symbol information .

Siemens recommend where possible that S7 and Protool etc is installed last - and whatever you do , do NOT instal PC ANYWHERE on the same PC as a machine with a siemens installation .

10BaseT. said:

QUESTION:
It should not be necessary to delete a DB - the software should note the time stamp instance and highlight the DB call in red - 5.3 was notorious for not detecting time stamp changes . It is certainly not necessary to delete the symbol information .

Click to expand...

I agree, it should not be necessary, but sometimes it is when the "update block call" doesn't work. And deleting the symbol information is sometimes necessary if there are conflicting data types. For instance, in the above case, if DB2 had once been a shared DB in the project and still used the original symbol, then the results will be unpredictable when it is used as an idb.

It's hard to predict what is actually going to help the situation, but deleting the block and the symbol is pretty much failsafe.

Now I am really stuck for a while

I tried removing the Step7 and SCL activations and ALM hung up and crashed my virtual machine. Now I can't restart the virtual machine. I will re-install the virtual machine and hopefully I can get my activations off. This includes my RSLogix activations. I am not happy. This simple task is taking way too much time.

Is there anyone else that can test FB2 while I recover? Asim, anybody? The idea would be to compare FB2 with the Scilab program.