Intellisense For AB ST?

seth350

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Is it just me, or does AB's ST editor have anyone else pulling their hair out?

I find myself having to do a lot of mouse work with the text editor is what I mean. For instance, typing in the first few letters of a tag and then pressing Ctrl-Space just gives you a blank drop down box to type in a tag, instead of the software attempting to finish what you started typing. Of course, before you begin to type the tag, you can press Ctrl-Space and then start typing the name of tag and it will fill in what it thinks you mean. I just find it to be clunky and awkward.
Also the lack of smart indentation.
The most frustrating thing is AB's lack of "Intellisense", or the lack of a traditional one. Also, the fact that I find myself getting fed up with the ST editor and swapping the logic over to ladder. Which usually ends up with me getting fed up with it as well. Knowing how much quicker and cleaner I could write it in ST, and so I swap the code back to ST and just grit my teeth.

I suppose I may be a tad bit spoiled from using Visual Studio and B&R's Automation Studio ST editor.
Does anyone know any tricks to speed up code writing in AB's ST editor? I would appreciate any tip or just a simple reply of "Suck it up, buttercup." šŸ™ƒ
 
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I think what it boils down to is that ST isn't a big priority for the typical AB customer, so they have no motivation to improve it.
 
I think what it boils down to is that ST isn't a big priority for the typical AB customer, so they have no motivation to improve it.

I agree. They seem to still be running with the notion that people who are used to wiring/troubleshooting relay logic will feel "at home" using their software to program/troubleshoot a machine. Which is probably why they have one of the best ladder editors that I have worked with.

I did end up finding this thread for anyone else who may be searching.

http://www.plctalk.net/qanda/showthread.php?p=748463

Im going to give Archie's idea a try.
 
Visual Code with the ST extension is a leap above AB's editor. Even recognizes tags as you type and includes snippets and auto-completion for expressions. Gives me the feeling of "home" as well. lol
 
At TechEd earlier this year in Melbourne they gave a preview of the new ST editor coming in v31. It looks like it'll address a lot of these concerns. The screenshots I saw were starting to look a lot like MS Visual Studio
 
I agree. They seem to still be running with the notion that people who are used to wiring/troubleshooting relay logic will feel "at home" using their software to program/troubleshoot a machine. Which is probably why they have one of the best ladder editors that I have worked with.

I was reading the other day that more and more computer science people get hired to program automation controls and, honestly, there is no way they'll use ladder for everything. Not only that, these people will, in the not so distant future be the decision makers.
So yeah, there's no doubt that Rockwell makes good automation systems, but their pricing structure (paying a huge amount for smart relay functionality) and the lack of attention to things like this will likely hurt them in the long run if they don't adapt.
 
In my experience the continuous syntax verification slows down the ST editor, and working on my largest project is irritatingly slow.

My intermediate solution is to open a session of Notepad++ set for Pascal syntax, and do my programming there, glancing back to Studio 5000 for tag names and syntax. Copy-paste and let the verifier do its job once.

That's cool that v31 might have a better editor.

After spending a month beating my head against a CoDeSys v3 based IDE for simply relay-ladder, I have a more broad appreciation for the challenges faced by developers.
 
CoDeSys ladder = pain. CoDeSyS ST = good.
Reverse for Allen-Bradley.

I taught myself structured text because of CoDeSys.
 

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