Backup S7 questions

When we make backups from the PLC's in several cranes we always check if there are differences betweens the blocks online and offline
Sometimes there are a lot differences cause there are several technicians who made changes ! Bad way to work but anyway ...the question :
when i upload the block i'm sure i have to working block on my PC but i loose all my network comment?
How do you guys do this ?
another question ? difference between upload and upload station ? when do you use the second ?

DeHulk

First of all, how are you 'backing' up you programs?

Are you taking out a laptop with the original project on, connecting to the PLC and then 'uploading' the blocks to the laptop? Or another way?

When I back-up, I upload the program to a laptop with the original project open and then back in my office I will copy the whole project (C:\Siemens\Step7\Proj\project name) to my back up storage media

difference between upload and upload station ? when do you use the second ?

Click to expand...

Upload is when you 'upload' the program to your PC/PG/Laptop

Upload Station is when you 'upload' the station configuration, not the program, to your PC/PG/Laptop. You would use this when you do not have the original configuration on your PC/PG/Laptop

Paul

Hello DeHulk

Here is how I upload the blocks without loosing comments.

First I open the project with the comments.
Then I open the blocks directory online (View-->Online).
Then I copy the blocks I want to upload and paste them into the offline project (Overwrite the old block).
Now I have the uploaded blocks with comments in the project.

!!! If there are new networks in the uploaded blocks then all network comments might not be in the right place !!!!!

Br
TS

The place I always get nailed is with data blocks or function blocks with internal data declarations. If you have a timestamp mismatch I have not found a way to preserve the declarations. These declarations are not symbols nor are they stored in any type of separate document file anywhere. They are also not stored in the plc.
So what i have started doing if I have a timestamp mismatch is I do an offline to online compare, make the changes in the offline file that I find in the online file and then download the block back to the plc. This gets the timestamps to match back up and gets everything on the same page.

If anyone out there knows how to get online/offline syncronization back I would REALLY like to know about it.

Keith

I nomrmaly didn't backup with the project opened on the laptop cause when there were changes i couldn't see afterwards what the differences were?

kamenges,

I am not 100% sure that the following will do what you want, but is worth a try:

Highlight blocks in S7 manager .
Select Edit from the menu and then Check block consistency .
That will start a utility program that .. well.. "checks the consistency of the blocks".

Reading the help text, it seems that it will assist in doing what you want to achieve.
I cant try it out myself right now, maybe you can do it and let me know how it goes

Jesper M.P.-
I had a chance to try this on an S7-313.
The block consistency check is more a development tool than anything. It will automatically regenerate instance data blocks, update call blocks to a functions if the function interface has changed, etc. It won't resolve online/offline conflicts.
I made up a simple program with an OB1, FB1, DB1 as an instance DB for FB1 and a shared DB2. I declared some variables in FB1.
I made changes to FB1 online that I didn't save offline. The changes involved variable I had already declared. I go a message that the online and offline versions were different but evrything displayed correctly.
I modified DB2 and didn't save it. This is the one that gets me. I added a real at the end of the DB. When I went back online it told me there was a difference. All the declarations were there but they had generic names like 'STAT1' and 'STAT2'. This is the one that gets me. The same will happen on function blocks where the declarations change.
These names are not saved as part of the program in the plc. I think they are integral to the block they were developed in. To the best of my knowledge there is no easy way to get these declared variable names back once a conflict is detected short of saving the whole project as a new project and copying the names one at a time. A more friendly approach would be to ask if the user wants to use the names in the order they were listed previously or if they want to lose them. At least you would have a chance to straighten them out this way.
Or am I missing something that might save me alot of grief.

Keith