AD Stage Programming

So I've decided to start branching out a bit more and look into another PLC programming package. Based on the popularity of it, I decided to try DirectSoft5.

Somehow, the documentation seems sorely lacking. Maybe it's because it's a new release...

My first question is - Stage View. This seems like reusable subroutines that can run concurrently? Now this, I like. Can somebody verify that, or am I off-base?

Thanks! More to follow, I'm sure...

TM

It displays the Stages in a Flowchart format. I rarely use it (and I use Stages everywhere). I find that it is difficult to see enough of the program to use it effectively.

Tim,

The programming documentation dosnt really cover actual programming, but just the DS5 interface. In the back of the PLC manuals (usually Volume 2) you will find a great primer on Stage Programming.

Greetings Timothy,

it looks like other posters have already answered your basic question ... here's just another thought ...

it's hard to tell from your post just how far up the "stage" learning curve you've already climbed ... but if you're not too far along, the "getting started" approach in this post might help with the basic ideas ... feel free to ignore this post if you're already past this level ...

even though I hardly ever program an AD processor anymore, I still make use of "stage programming" quite often - on paper ... as I said in that linked post, "stage" is a great way of flow-charting a sequence of events and organizing your thoughts in the initial steps of writing a program ...

Thanks everyone, especially Ron, this was just what I needed. I can figure out the commands once I have a sense of what it should do

Interestingly, this is exactly how I program now, but since Unitronics lacks the nice stage structure, I do it myself with integers to advance the program. Natural fit.

Finally - how portable do you find the code to be in this system? For instance, is it fairly simple to copy a stage from one project to another and assign IO and go?

Thanks!

TM

Most definitely. If you have some code that can be used for many similar functions, it is very easy to do. If I have, for example, 4 functions that are all the same except for the variables, I use 4 blocks of Vmem, Timers, Counters, etc. and then copy the block of code to a new project, MOV all the numbers, update the nicknames, and then copy it back into the original project.



Works great

TimothyMoulder said:

Finally - how portable do you find the code to be in this system? For instance, is it fairly simple to copy a stage from one project to another and assign IO and go?

Click to expand...

The copy/paste between projects works very well. I do it all the time. One nice feature is the ability to choose how the documentation (symbols, nicknames, etc.) gets pasted. You have 3 choices:

• Don't paste documentation
• Paste, but don't overwrite existing documentation <-- VERY Handy!
• Paste, overwriting existing documentation

-Eric