Have I told you guys how much I hate programming using Step7 today?

[mk42]

Can Step7 S7-300 programs be convert to TIA Portal or is TIA Portal only for S7-1200 and S7-1500?

Beware: Brain Dump Follows

Portal supports the pretty much all the current PLC's: 300, 400, 1200, 1500, WinAC. Simotion can even use it for the HW config portion. 1200/1500 are ONLY supported in Portal. 300/400/etc are all supported (including safety), except the 300T and 400H. S7-200 is no longer sold, so it isn't included, and apparently Logo, as a smart relay, isn't cool enough to be part of the Portal family. The important thing to know is that while a lot of the new features of the Portal are available in the old PLC's, some of them require the newer PLC's. I don't think they changed the compiler for the 300 between Simatic Manager and Portal, but at least it still gets the new user interface. 300 still can't index arrays in ladder, but at least it gets the drag and drop UI. Also, beware: ALL THE HOTKEYS ARE DIFFERENT. I'm a mouse programmer, so it doesn't bother me, but most of my colleagues are keyboard guys, and it burns them.

When they launched Portal, Siemens said it would only support HW that they were actively selling in 2007. While that sounds like a decent window, I wouldn't recommend it for end users with an existing install base, only for OEM's using current product, or End Users who have only recently switched to Siemens. If you have an existing install base, odds are its too old. I heard even my local Siemens distributor had to upgrade all its training racks to be able to use Portal for training classes; not even to show off new products, just getting more updated versions of the cards it was already using.

It is possible to migrate a Simatic Manager project to Portal, but once there, you can't go back. The migration tool is one way. Portal has a few useful import tools, but it is missing a lot of export options that Simatic Manager had (at least for the 1500).

Licensing wise, Step 7 basic covers the 1200, Step 7 Professional covers all PLC's. Safety is still an option package. CFC and Hi-Graph are no longer available.

Using Portal with the 300/400 PLC's can be a little frustrating for an experienced Siemens programmer at first, DB downloads work completely differently. From what I hear, most users sticking with the 300's stick with Simatic Manager until they switch to the 1500. Here in Detroit, the Big 3 are all sticking with Simatic Manager for now, for any projects that go Siemens.

 

[rootboy]

...and my ancestry is half German , so I want to give the Germans the benefit of the doubt...

I was born in Germany, and I am of the opinion that they shouldn't be allowed to program. Or at least heavily monitored when they do so...

That said, I took a Step 7 class last year and was impressed with how they had fixed things up quite a bit from the last time that I used it. So, I would have to say "definitely sucked less".

 

[Doug-P]

14,066 views

This one hit a nerve!

 

[jstolaruk]

Here in Detroit, the Big 3 are all sticking with Simatic Manager for now, for any projects that go Siemens.

Sort of, GM requires WinCC TIA Portal in their new 3.1 spec. My office mate has painfully gone through the conversion.

 

[Peter Nachtwey]

14,066 views

This one hit a nerve!

Yes, mine!!!!

I wasted a lot of time writing example programs to interface S7s to our controllers. Our customers couldn't do it so I had too. Even after I wrote a pretty good interface that looks sort of like a Rockwell MSG block the customers were still reluctant to use the function blocks I wrote because they used a lot of memory and code. The code I wrote didn't take that much space but the FBs that my code was calling did. The code wasn't that fast.

 

[rootboy]

Sort of, GM requires WinCC TIA Portal in their new 3.1 spec. My office mate has painfully gone through the conversion.

Same thing here...

 

[parky]

I think you will find that if the processor version is quite old that although you can convert the code and monitor it will not let you change & download, I made that mistake so Siemens still sell S7 V5.5 for compatibility with the older processors so it cost me dear as this was not explained when I purchased TIA.

They are not the only company, Mitsubishi have gone away from GXIEC Developer and now have GXWorks, the code is easily imported & converted with a few minor irritations but on very large projects these errors can mount into the hundreds, some of the standard functions have also changed and require the variables passed to/from the function to have a different format, most of these are from words/bits etc. to arrays if the system is existing then you may have to move variables about to allow for the arrays, on a working system this poses a problem. The other problem as posted in another post is GXIEC is now on hold regarding updates, although works on Win 7 some of the configurator apps do not & when re-loading a project to a new processor will not work, you have to either configure the cards in code or use GXWorks, to configure then download parameters and use GXDev to donload code.