Siemens - TIA - PLC text lists.

Rob...

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Out of curiosity, does anyone know where and how you would use these?

Can't find anything in the manual.

I don't have any reason for needing them just like to know what its for.

text_list.png
 
This is not necessarily the best practice to use them, but we used them in a project, where we had multiple touch panels and WinCC RT Advanced running on a PC.

We wanted to handle the alarms in one place, so we did the alarms in the PLC with Program_Alarm blocks that were inside the FB that handled device. The alarm texts were in the form
device position: Alarm text, i.e. TT 01.01.01 HiHi alarm. When calling a device in the program one input parameter was number pointing into a textlist containing device positions, so when there was an alarm, the correct device position would be automatically inserted into the alarm text.
 
You can use text list for alarms that you send from the PLC.
You pass an integer to the alarmblock and it translates the number to the text in the text list. Similar to the text list in the HMI.



The text list where also available in Step7 Classic and was used by internally by the different editors like Graph and CFC charts it might be the same in TIA.
 
I use text lists for things like:

Description of the current step in a sequence, text description of the status of a device (ex: a scale: LOADING, STABILIZING, WEIGHT OK, UNLOADING).

Basically you're representing a value of a tag as a text description on the screen.
 
You can use text list for alarms that you send from the PLC.
You pass an integer to the alarmblock and it translates the number to the text in the text list. Similar to the text list in the HMI.



The text list where also available in Step7 Classic and was used by internally by the different editors like Graph and CFC charts it might be the same in TIA.

Not used graph in TIA, will take a look.

I use text lists for things like:

Description of the current step in a sequence, text description of the status of a device (ex: a scale: LOADING, STABILIZING, WEIGHT OK, UNLOADING).

Basically you're representing a value of a tag as a text description on the screen.

Yes, but I would use the text lists in the HMI not in the PLC. From what I see there is no way of linking the text list I have shown in the PLC and the HMI.
 
The purpose is like Hietsu says that if you have 10 HMIS there is a benefit in putting the texts in the PLC since you then only have to configure them in one place instead of 10.
 
As far as I know, these are used for alarming. In the 1500, I think it uses system text lists for the system diagnostics, and you can integrate your own customer text lists into things like the ProgramAlarm. This allows you to manage alarms only in the PLC, and the Comfort Panel doesn't even need to be updated as alarms are added. As a bonus, you can the alarms can dynamically include other text like the FB instance name, so it can automatically generate different text for each instance of the alarm, vs doing it manually for every device in the HMI.



The 1200 doesn't have the ProgramAlarm instruction. I think the only thing you can use them for is Gen_UsrMsg, which allows you to create your own custom entries in the Diagnostic Buffer of the PLC.
 

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