Wulfgar

Neither pay much attention to making their software easy to use, efficient or highly custumizable.

Wulfgar

You may be right in SCL, I've not used it much. I do most of my programming in ladder since that is what our customers prefer. There is a lack of shortcut keys in both Siemens and AB and the few shortcut keys there are you can not change them. Omron allows you to make or modify a shortcut key for just about anything.

For example in Omron there is a shortcut to go to the coil of the contact you are on and another to go back. In Siemens they do now have a cross-reference window but it's sometimes hidden requireing a couple of clicks to bring it up, scan the list and then click on the coil.

huggy_d1

The excellent features of Siemens which AB CL does not have... the topic title is only slightly biased??

But! Siemens is starting to listen to the users and their customers, and threads like this may help them see their bloat-ware is very akin to Windoze.

The most time saving function of the AB software allows me to key in all of my rungs and instructions with the keyboard.

Siemens claims that they are 'simple' and "just drag and drop" (watch their videos) the truth is, the drag and drop is random -when you need it, its does not appear to be available. The windows open and close to what seems like a maze of traps and the software crashes twice per day.

AB treats memory as what it is - blocks.AB also puts enough in the plc's- for some reason, memory in Germany must cost in excess of $100 usd per megabyte?

Step 7 does seem to work, similar to Omron and Automation Directs software. I am confused why a previous complaint was made against AB's compute instruction - I know for a fact none of you Siemens people use the Compute statement in step 7 - as it is far easier to switch to structured text than waste your time with that worthless statement.

Please put your efforts towards making the Siemens product more useable and competitive as it is here to stay and we must work with it. Repeatedly stating that it is anexcellent and superior product is causing the manufacturer to resist making it better. I repeatedly hear that bug reporting is a lost cause as the Siemens engineers refuse to acknowledge when they have made a mistake. I am also very upset with the products that TIA portal bricks during firmware updates (see posts regarding KP300's)

Brian Darling

The most time saving function of the AB software allows me to key in all of my rungs and instructions with the keyboard.

Siemens claims that they are 'simple' and "just drag and drop" (watch their videos) the truth is, the drag and drop is random -when you need it, its does not appear to be available. The windows open and close to what seems like a maze of traps and the software crashes twice per day.

AB treats memory as what it is - blocks.AB also puts enough in the plc's- for some reason, memory in Germany must cost in excess of $100 usd per megabyte?

Step 7 does seem to work, similar to Omron and Automation Directs software. I am confused why a previous complaint was made against AB's compute instruction - I know for a fact none of you Siemens people use the Compute statement in step 7 - as it is far easier to switch to structured text than waste your time with that worthless statement.

Please put your efforts towards making the Siemens product more useable and competitive as it is here to stay and we must work with it. Repeatedly stating that it is anexcellent and superior product is causing the manufacturer to resist making it better. I repeatedly hear that bug reporting is a lost cause as the Siemens engineers refuse to acknowledge when they have made a mistake. I am also very upset with the products that TIA portal bricks during firmware updates (see posts regarding KP300's)

I have been working with S7-300 for the past 4 years and ControlLogix the previous 8 years. Although I agree with some of your assessments I think other comments are out of date. AB PLC5 was a nightmare, but ControlLogix platforms are a dream to program. I also like many of the Siemens PLC features, such as simulation and comparison. I like the modular block approach as well, but Rockwell has also implemented similar features, so your comparison is a bit out of date perhaps. One may now use code blocks containing their own local and global memory, like the Siemens FBs with IN, OUT, STAT, TEMP, etc. I also liked the Rockwell documentation much more, but you can't beat the price of Siemens support, and they are very helpful without holding you hostage. Still, I sometimes miss the easy integration of Structured Text and Ladder that we had with ControlLogix compared to Step 7. I also miss the ease with which I could add code and even memory while on line. Perhaps it's not something you should do often, but when it was needed it saved me from excessive downtime. Also, the ControlLogix hardware is not really a PLC in the classical sense; it's more properly referred to as a PAC. The ControlLogix platform emulates a PLC but actually uses an RTOS and multiple processors (separate I/O, and logic CPUs) and accordingly supports some memory allocation tricks Siemens can't do yet. That allows some of the features mentioned, but it also requires the programmer to be aware that old PLC programming syntax may not always work as expected, so it takes a bit to get that figured out. I've just started with S7-1500 CPUs and TIA Portal, so I'm not ready to compare that to RSLogix 5000 just yet, but I'm happy to see some of the features I was used to with Rockwell.