Siemens PCS7 advantage???

[Csar1985]

Hello,

In our company, we are currently looking to change our way of programming since we've been growing for the last 10 year and our projects our becomming bigger an bigger. The current structure of our programs and visualisation aren't developed to handle this kind of projects.

Now, i've heard a lot of Siemens PCS7, but we're also thinking about developing our own function blocks since the devices we use are always the same. And so we can develope function blocks specifically for that type of device. I don't know which option is best because i don't have experience in PCS7. Is there someone on this forum who can tell the advantages & disadvantadges of PCS7. And what would you do if you were in my position?

Thanks in advance

Nico

 

[KalleOlsen]

Hi Csar!

You can develop you own FBs and faceplates and still use them in PCS7. There are spesific manuals that describes how to do it.

Advantages of PCS7: Programming in CFC, automatically generated tags, alarms and object icons with faceplates. Extensive diagnostics. Always consistent data - deleted object instances in CFC causes that tags and alarms are automatically removed from the database and HMI! I.e. minimal work on the HMI. Lots of add-on's and several libraries are available (extra cost, of course). And the system is proven and the releases are run in Siemens test lab in Karlsruhe for several months. And my experience is that the systems runs very stable. Another good thing; you can do reprogramming on a running system. If you activate CiR, you can also load HW in run.


Disadvantages: It is not well suited for machine automation.
You need CPU power and RAM and I think it would feel quite claustrophobic with less than 414-3. PCS7 is also based on some system functions that only exists in the 400s.

Confusing: The combination of licenses . I must allways ask the Siemens contact person.

I have used PLC + SCADA before and now PCS7 for some years, and I very much prefer the latter. Cause I'm fed up with all the bitsorting and byteswapping and icon testing and driver problem and incompatible Windows HFs and...and...and...


I don't want to advise you to anything but check more around the PCS7. Call for a salesman and ask him to bring a technican!

You have probably checked this link www.siemens.com/pcs7



Kalle