Siemens PLC high speed programming

Hello,
Maybe topic does not describe the best what do I want but I will try to explain it now.
I'll post this to HARDWARE and SOFTWARE section.
Few days ago in our company arrived SCHNEIDER and they have been speaking about DTM and it's advantages. I would not like to speak about DTM or SCHNEIDER, for us SIEMENS is a way better.
My question goes to something to speed up way of making program (hardware or software help is welcome)
I'm interested how to speed up my programming job with a help of SIEMENS. I'll describe a little bit a bone of my projects in order to get me better.

1. Project usually consists of 1 PLC(ET200S or S7300), 10 DI modules(each one 8 DI per module),
5-6 DO modules, 4 AI and 1 A= module.
It's lets say usual hardware configuration.
2. We enter all TAGS(variables) DI, DO, AI,AO inside excel file and with EXCEL we generate STL source. STL source allows us to read program in FBD.
3. With this way we make lets say 30% of our project: (Alarm blocks, DI FBDs, SIMBOL names for DI,DO,AI,AO inside SYMBOL table)
4. 70% is rest of my project. Only way how to speed up my pgoramming jo relies on some programming ideas like(better program structure, loops and so on)
Generally it takes up to 3 weeks to finish project. 3 weeks in a case when you know all the program structure and with a help of someone else's project from the past.
5. Project we are making inside SIMATIC MANAGER step 7 v5.5

We are lookign for some software or hardware components in order to speed up our job.

Some of my ideas which comes from computer science would be something like object oriented programming , lets say something like MICROSOFT Visual Studio C#
IS there anything like that SIEMENS provides, Idea would be to make it possible that SCADA guys are actually building/making a part of our project.

I'm not asking for some specific answer, Im looking for some ideas sooftware or hardware in order to speed up things.

As you said, having an object oriented approach is the way to go so you can reuse code from project to project.

This would reduce the time taken to develop future projects as well as reduce the testing of said blocks as the debugging from a previous project would have fixed bugs previously.

I suppose you don't create systems that are copy paste of previous projects, so I would create functions to deal with valves/motors/sensors/diagnostics/actuators and then possibly try to create higher level functionality such as state machines, etc... that can be used in a variety of projects for sequencing, etc...

Siemens does give you the ability to create your own libraries. You can create an actuator library, sensor library, comms library, etc... Likewise, you can have a standard project with your regular hardware configuration and (if required) network configuration and start all projects from there.

I haven't developed this myself in TIA Portal, but worked for a number of years like this with Step7 where pretty much all functions were in libraries and a base project and we had to kinda fill in the blanks.

FC and FBs

Hi,

As cardosocea said, you can have most of your logic embedded with your own reusable library. Using FBs.

FBs can be similar to what computer science call objects. The function is in side of the object and it has an asociated data stucture . You can have a FB for every type of device in your installation (Motor, drive, valve). Inside of the FB you would have the data always at the same place, so you could have templates to access state, orders and alarms in the same place. You would only need to say to your SCADA people :
Motor1 = DB121
Valve34 = DB122

In the PLC program you would only need to set how to interconnect between blocks and assign inputs and outpus.

Best regards,
Kelkoon

Siemens does provide a "Command Interface" for Simatic Manager, which is an API to allow you to automate some aspects of programming. I've seen demos where a hypothetical OEM who builds a serial machine could create a VB app that selects from a a few options, and it spits out the code (maybe HW as well?) for those specific options. However, in those cases there is always a completed project that has 100% of the possible code, and the VB app just selects the parts needed.

The same concept in Portal is called "Openness", but i think they're still phasing parts of it in. They just released a new service pack that was supposed to add a lot of support optons, not sure if anything is still missing.

As others have said, using FBs (especially multi-instanced FBs) is about as close to abject oriented as PLCs get. I haven't heard of a PLC that supports classes, inheritance, those sorts of things, but there is a lot of power in having MOTOR blocks, VALVE blocks, etc.

10 DI modules(each one 8 DI per module),5-6 DO modules, 4 AI and 1 AO module.

Click to expand...

15 days seems like a reasonable amount of time to cut and paste a project of that size together using other projects that have solved all of the same problems before.

If you want to do it faster then reuse the exact same program. You will have to tell people that this is our off the shelf product, this is how you wire it, and this is what it does. Your customers will have to conform their systems to your product. You can reuse all of the same drawings and manuals too.