Apologies if this has been covered before. If it has I cannot find it, sorry and I really cannot be bothered to read through endless threads of people bitching about TIA Portal.

Anyhow, in the old days using Step7 I used to use the import external source file to good effect. I had an excel spreadsheet that I would use for generating the outline of any auto sequences. This would enable me to type in the step number, title, comment and next step number (The details are irrelevant really) and it would generate some STL that I could copy and paste into a source file that I could use the compile function on to automatically make a FC (along with network titles and comments and skeleton code) that would convert into ladder (I was very careful about the NOP and jump labels in the STL). This meant that I could save a load of time at the start of a project. 

Now I cannot seem to find that facility in TIA with a 1200 PLC. I know it's got SCL and not STL but SCL is no use to me for writing a control sequence.

Does anyone know of a way of doing this kind of thing? I can write the excel macro and whatnot myself, I just need a method of getting this code into the PLC using as few steps as possible.

Thanks in advance.

Thanks, I understand that, I was wondering if anyone had any other methods for this kind of thing?

I have just tried the same thing with a S7-1500 project and it seems that you cannot switch between STL and LAD or FBD. Oh dear, thats a definate step backwards.

Hello,

I dont know if this helps but I also generate code and import to the old simatic. Now with TIA PORTAL, the new plcs dont let me convert blocks from STL to LAD. So I create a project (in TIA PORTAL) with S7-300/400 a import the generated awl file. Afterwards, I convert it to LAD or FBD and copy the block to the s7-1500 and solves my problem.

Maybe you can also use this and adjust to your need...