I am using TIA Portal V14 to write the software for a new machine project.

S7-1500 (1512SP-F PN), ET200SP, TP1900.

As per the recommendations in the Siemens programming guides, I have used UDTs to define the input and output areas for my ET200SP IO modules.

I can see the advantages of this, and the process of using tag tables to allocate the UDTs to IO address areas has gone well.

However, I now seem to have a problem with using the IO tags in my program.

If I select the tag table in the devices tree on the left, I can then see all the IO tags in the 'Details view' in the bottom left corner of the screen.

Then, if I then try to drag one of the tags from the 'Details view' into my program, for example for a digital input, nothing happens.

It seems that when the ET200 IO tags are declared using UDTs, the individual inputs and outputs that are declared in the UDT cannot be selected in the Details view.

To get round this, I have manually typed in the address of the input or output directly in the program, e.g. Q1.0.

Has anyone else seem this?

Does anyone have a fix or tip to help?

Yes I can confirm this behaviour; struct members can't be draged and dropped.

Otoh. I never used the details window so can't say that I need it. Maybe because I program in scl?

However it does auto complete when typing and the auto complete doesn't any longer crash TIA portool corrupting the project on it's way (fingers crossed).

Hi enof,

Thanks for the reply.  It's good to hear that the SCL editor is more stable in V14.

As for the tag problem I reported.  It seems that this lack of functionality, in terms of using UDTs to define the IO, is quite a flaw with TIA Portal.

I completely get why Siemens suggest this method of using a UDT to declare module IO, as it offers advantages in the programming of matching FC/FB interfaces etc.

However, surely the idea of TIA portal is to offer the ability to declare tag variables with a UDT, and then give the tools to easily use them within the programming environment. 

I'm not going to get into a rant here about this point.  TIA V14 does seem fairly stable so far (fingers crossed).  However, this issue that I have found does seem to be a major flaw in the way that TIA Portal has been designed when handling IO variables.

Hi Huggy D1,

Thanks for the reply.  Yes indeed, it is a benefit in TIA V14  to be able to mix LAD and SCL in the same block.  TIA Portal has now caught up with Simotion Scout MCC chart  'ST Zoom'  ;-)

I have tried your suggestion this morning, to copy from the details view and paste into the code.  Unfortunately this does not work, individual IO tags that are defined using UDTs cannot be copied.

However, as you suggested, auto complete does work if the symbol name is typed in directly into the code.  Not as convenient as drag-and-drop from the details window, but it offers another method.

Hi,
you wrote: "As per the recommendations in the Siemens programming guides"

in which Siemens programming guide i can find the recommendation to use UDTs on hardware IOs?
Could you please provide me the link to that document?
i already scrolled through a bunch of programming guidelines but i cannot find anything about it...

best regards