Hello Rares,

I suggest you to start with Working with STEP 7 V5.4 Getting Started . And then with SIMATIC NET Industrial Communications Commissioning PC Stations - Manual and Quick Start and WinCC V7.0 Getting started . You can also find a lot of manuals here using search button. About OPC Server, you can use any server. I your case I suggest you Simatic Net server.

Hope this will helps in the beginning.

Best regards

Hi Rares

Umencho is right you will get more information going through the manuals.To answer your questions here is a brief description:

SIMATIC NET is the name of an entire family of communication networks and products from Siemens. The various networks meet the widest possible range of performance and application requirements in automation engineering.

Step 7 is the SIMATIC standard software for creating programmable logic control programs in Ladder Logic, Function Block Diagram, or Statement List for SIMATIC S7-300/400 stations.

WINCC is a WinCC is powerful HMI system for use under Microsoft Windows.HMI stands for "Human Machine Interface", i.e. the interface between the human (the operator) and the machine (the process).It is used for monitoring and controlling production processes as well as for archiving and further processing of production data.

OPC is a vendor-independent software interface that allows data exchange between hardware and software from different vendors.The OPC interface is part of the software running on a PC as the platform for operator control and monitoring systems or other applications.