What do you need to go online with a Siemens

passwordg

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The PLC is a Siemens CPU317-2 PN/DP
We know it needs Step7 software, not TIA portal, but that is all we know for now.

What other information do we need from the programmers:
IP addresses ?
PLC Firmware version, Step7 version ?
Profinet version ??
etc ?

What would be the file extensions for the PLC file and the WinCC HMI ?


Thank you!
 
Last edited:
The PLC is a Siemens CPU317-2 PN/DP
We know it needs Step7 software, not TIA portal, but that is all we know for now.

What other information do we need from the programmers:
IP addresses ?
PLC Firmware version, Step7 version ?
Profinet version ??
etc ?

What would be the file extensions for the PLC file and the WinCC HMI ?


Thank you!

Technically, Step 7 exists in both the older Simatic Manager and the newer TIA Portal. You'd need to know what version of Step 7 they are using, plus versions of any addons/options (safety is a common one). Both TIA and Simatic Manager have tools to show all installed software components.

You have to HOPE you can get access to the project. It will not be just one file, but a folder with many files and folders in it. However, they are commonly distributed as zip files (archives).

If you don't have the project, then you'll need to know the IP address & subnet mask. From there you should be able to upload all the code, although it won't contain any useful tag names. You just have absolute addresses, and generic tagnames like "TAG1" "TAG2" etc.

FW version is relatively independent of Step 7 version, so it shouldn't matter much.

Profinet version isn't a thing you'll need to worry about.

Also, you need an Ethernet cable. You shouldn't need to worry about crossover vs straight thru anymore.
 
Technically, Step 7 exists in both the older Simatic Manager and the newer TIA Portal. You'd need to know what version of Step 7 they are using, plus versions of any addons/options (safety is a common one). Both TIA and Simatic Manager have tools to show all installed software components.

You have to HOPE you can get access to the project. It will not be just one file, but a folder with many files and folders in it. However, they are commonly distributed as zip files (archives).

If you don't have the project, then you'll need to know the IP address & subnet mask. From there you should be able to upload all the code, although it won't contain any useful tag names. You just have absolute addresses, and generic tagnames like "TAG1" "TAG2" etc.

FW version is relatively independent of Step 7 version, so it shouldn't matter much.

Profinet version isn't a thing you'll need to worry about.

Also, you need an Ethernet cable. You shouldn't need to worry about crossover vs straight thru anymore.


If you manage to get an archive (project in zip format) chances are that the HMI will be included to the project and won't be a separate file(s) as long as they original programmer used the WinCC Flex integrated to the Step 7.
In case you manage to upload without the original source/project expect what mk42 has described above.
Generic "STAT" for DB's and absolute addresses for I/O, markers (m0.0, m0.1 , etc) as you don't have a symbols table to work with.
WincC Flex will be another issue as well as it could be anything such as 2008 sp2, sp3, sp5, who knows.
 
He stated that they (integrator) used Step 7 in one of his previous post.

Here's the thing though: Step 7 is the name of two software packages. One is Step 7 v5.6 (or whatever version) that lives in Simatic Manager. The other is Step 7 v15 (or whatever version) that lives in TIA Portal.

Especially if he isn't familiar with Siemens, it's easy to get confused if you aren't precise with your terms.

Something I forgot to mention in the other post:

If it is the older Simatic Manager, you're probably safe to buy the most recent version of everything. It is amazing about cross version compatibility.

If it is TIA Portal, you probably need exactly the version that they programmed it with originally. You can migrate projects between versions of Portal, but it isn't always seamless, and they can rarely do anything meaningful when online with a PLC downloaded to from a different version of Portal. You still will probably buy the most recent license (V15), but it will then activate whatever older version is actually needed.
 
Here's the thing though: Step 7 is the name of two software packages. One is Step 7 v5.6 (or whatever version) that lives in Simatic Manager. The other is Step 7 v15 (or whatever version) that lives in TIA Portal.

Thanks ! I had no idea there were two kinds of S7. I do know for a fact this specific cell has nothing to do with TIA.

If it is the older Simatic Manager, you're probably safe to buy the most recent version of everything. It is amazing about cross version compatibility.
That is pretty cool. I was concerned we would need to struggle like Rockwell with specific Rslogix versions for specific firmwares.
 
Thanks ! I had no idea there were two kinds of S7. I do know for a fact this specific cell has nothing to do with TIA.

It's worse on the HMI side. "WinCC" is essentially just a brand for "HMI related software from Siemens". There are a ton of products that share the name WinCC. Most of them have some other word as part of the name (like WinCC Comfort), but one is JUST WinCC, and is a SCADA platform.

That is pretty cool. I was concerned we would need to struggle like Rockwell with specific Rslogix versions for specific firmwares.

Yeah, it's nice. You can open up a Step 7 v5.3 project in Step 7 v5.6, make a few edits, then give them the same project back, and they probably will not even know you used a different version.

The main trick is that once you add newer HW, when they get the project back they'll get one of a variety of messages that says they are missing a package, or need a hardware update, or something else. On the plus side, this is rarely an issue for an integrator coming in and working on an existing system. You just need to be careful that if new HW is added, it is compatible with the older SW the facility uses.
 

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