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TIA Portal Faceplates & Data types discussion

Created by: ThaKibosh at: 4/29/2014 11:57 AM (17 Replies)

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4/29/2014 11:57 AM	Rate (3)
ThaKibosh Bronze Member Joined: 5/31/2011 Last visit: 1/9/2025 Posts: 190 Rating: (31)	Hey all, This post is to find out your thought of view about how today in TIA Portal V13 the faceplate system works, how to link all the stuff with the PLC through for example data types. Because to be honest, I find Siemens misted some opportunity's to upgrade this all. For example in the stand alone (old) WinCC v6.2 you can work with picture windows and tag prefixes to create nice popups to control all the different equipments of the plant. Today, this is still not available in WinCC Comfort/Advanced and I don't understand why... But, as always, there are work arounds, and let's talk about this now. My experience in TIA Portal goes from S7-1200/300 PLC's and TIA Comfort panels. I didn't use WinCC Professional yet. First, this is how we did things using Step 7 v5.5 and WinCC Flexible 2008. In the PLC we had created a typical FB to control a motor. This FB has off course it's own instance datablock. The symbolic name for the datablock was the same as the tag name of the object. The advantage of this approach: 1. Inside the PLC program it was easy to read, for example "A VWW1-P001.CMD" you knew direct that it was the command signal off that pump. 2. Each controllable object, motors, valves, ... has their own datablock. This was fast for monitoring. 3. In the HMI we could use a indexer tag which we filled with the datablock number and link that way to the actual tags to be used for a popup faceplate. So we only needed one faceplate (popup) for one typical, example motors). The drawback off this aproach, is the cross reference. You can not see from where the bit "VWW1-P001.CMD" is coming. I mean, the cross reference will not show the FB call. You can see off course were all the calls are for that bit. Some people don't like this. But now things have changed with the coming off the S7-1200 / 1500 PLC's and their "optimized" memory. Reading the guidelines, it's not adviced to use the instance datablock outside of their FB's like we used to do. It is still possible, just not adviced. Siemens guide tell us to use datatypes, and link them through the IO from the FB for data that should be used outside the FB. That way the cross reference works better. But with that approach you need to make a global datablock with all the data for all motors. This works also just fine inside the PLC, but now comes the part to link them easily with the Panel. In TIA Siemens is talking all the time over the "Drag & Drop" features, which works fine for the simple things, but not for Data Types. So you have your datablock ready build up with datatypes for all you motors. You can drag and drop this complete DB into a HMI Tag table. But directly there is a problem, the HMI does not take over the datatypes, they become seperate tags in the panel. You could create the same datatype in the HMI panel, but then you need to use "absolute adressing" to the PLC data. And because you want to use optimized datablocks, this is not possible. Then there are the popups we have made. Thanks to being able to adress with the datablock number we could use a single popup faceplate to link all the motors on a screen. Otherwise you could have 10 popup faceplates, and to be honest, TIA Portal is still massively slow! And for each faceplate you use, it appears to get slower. But with those datatypes, it's not possible to create some sort of "indirect adressing" for faceplates. So, .... what is your thought about all the above? PS: I hope my writing was a bit understandable?

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5/26/2014 11:31 AM	Rate (0)
ArnoudB Posts: 9 Rating: (0)	Hello, I think TIA works fine. Some little problems still in it, but works fine. Sometimes I miss the components with an older age in it. you can't use them. You can import the GSD file but, not always it will work. WinCC professional is working also good. It is very simple. But also some problems, it hangs, shutdown, won’t do what you want, etc. So to conclude: TIA is good, works fine, but has still some problems.
ArnoudB Posts: 9 Rating: (0)
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5/26/2014 4:06 PM	Rate (1)
crazyCow Gold Member Joined: 12/4/2009 Last visit: 12/20/2024 Posts: 453 Rating: (136)	ThaKibosh Hey all, So, .... what is your thought about all the above? PS: I hope my writing was a bit understandable? Dear ThaKibosh, your writing is more than understandable, because your post cuts directly to the core of the problem: there is a massive drawback with optimized memory access concept in TIA product line. I face exactly the same problem with migrating my programming philosophy (not software, but programming manners) to TIA framework. Siemens developement engineers force us to use higher data types and symbolic addressing, which causes us a lot ofinconveniences. For example, and from my point of view, it is insane to interpret direct FB output access as a warning. Again, from my point of view, this is why block outputs exists: to access function results directly from our application. There are zero reasons to insert "buffers" between FB block outputs and user application, as it leads to messy and unreadable PLC code. I certainly agree with you observations about HMI data types. Being slow in the bare project beginning, TIA framework becomes slower and slower with every faceplate instance created, not to mention "need to restart" when faceplate model reaches certain level of complexity. I share your dissapointment. Regards.
	Last edited by: crazyCow at: 5/26/2014 4:09 PM Last edited by: crazyCow at: 3/12/2016 7:28:52 PM If this post actually helped, you may consider using the Rate button above.
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1/31/2015 7:43 PM	Rate (0)
Sergey R Advanced Member Joined: 10/13/2008 Last visit: 10/7/2024 Posts: 9 Rating: (0)	Dear ThaKibosh, I'm absolutely agree with yours disappointments. ALL TIA PRODUCTS are still on the BETA level of completement. But the question is what is the Siemens's look to PLC and HMI application development process? What will be the mainstream in the next generation of PLC applications development software (I mean TIA portal)?

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2/2/2015 8:13 AM	Rate (1)
K!ke Posts: 1299 Rating: (136)	Hello, with V13 SP1 you can now use the PLC data types directly in wincc. so you don't need to define same datatype two times. you just need to add the plc data type to the library to use it as faceplate property in wincc... K!ke
K!ke Posts: 1299 Rating: (136)
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2/2/2015 9:16 AM	Rate (0)
ThaKibosh Bronze Member Joined: 5/31/2011 Last visit: 1/9/2025 Posts: 190 Rating: (31)	Thanx for the heads-up K!ke, I've just tested it quickly and you are right. It's a big plus. So we can now create datatypes with all data in one type, signals that stay in PLC and the signals going to the HMI/SCADA. Nice. But for WinCC Comfort / Advanced, we need some "prefix" and "picture windows". We tried with scripting to access the tags symbolically, although it worked, the scripts became to complex. Also I prefer to use onboard functions instead off scripting. Better for upgrading later. I will be really impressed when Siemens finally releases sort off "picture windows" for WinCC Comfort / Advanced so we can use popups to link to faceplates. PS: An being able to use a template screen for the popups, so you don't need to copy them to each screen. EDIT: I've noticed that from V13 SP1 there are now popups, and drop-down screens. But not yet with a tag-prefix.
	Last edited by: ThaKibosh at: 2/2/2015 3:21 PM Last edited by: ThaKibosh at: 2/27/2015 10:01:07 AM
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2/26/2015 7:41 PM	Rate (0)
MTPV Seymour Posts: 1 Rating: (0)	You can add the PLC datatype to the faceplate now. However, you can't use the PLC datatype as the "Data Type" of an HMI tag. Unless I am missing something?. Both the TP1200 Comfort and Mobile Panel 277 cannot use the PLC datatypes (added to the library) as a "Data Type" option in the HMI Tag editor. So, I am confused, how to do I used the PLC data type in the faceplate if I can't create an HMI tag of the same data type?
MTPV Seymour Posts: 1 Rating: (0)
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2/27/2015 7:46 AM	Rate (0)
K!ke Posts: 1299 Rating: (136)	Hello, you can't insert a datatype as a tag. but if you have a tag in the plc with this data type (e.g. in a db) you can use this tag as an hmi tag. K!ke
K!ke Posts: 1299 Rating: (136)
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2/27/2015 8:36 PM	Rate (0)
mmckay Bronze Member Joined: 9/21/2006 Last visit: 5/25/2023 Posts: 247 Rating: (65)	K!ke Hello, you can't insert a datatype as a tag. but if you have a tag in the plc with this data type (e.g. in a db) you can use this tag as an hmi tag. K!ke I have been looking at this feature this morning. As best as I can figure out, in WinCC Adv V13 SP1 Upd1, you can create an HMI tag of a PLC user data type tag that is access symbolically. I can create the tag, and access the tag using absolute addressing, but I haven't figured out a way to access the tag symbolically, even though the tag itself is in an optimized data block in the PLC. Screenshots attached. I am hoping that I just haven't quite figured out how to do it yet. Attachment UDT_HMI_Tags.zip (1031 Downloads)

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3/2/2015 8:40 AM	Rate (1)
ThaKibosh Bronze Member Joined: 5/31/2011 Last visit: 1/9/2025 Posts: 190 Rating: (31)	Be careful when using optimized datablocks. The PLC will choose the adressing. It wil put all booleans, integers and reals together to minimize used memory. Linking these datablocks absolute with a panel can be wrong. Maybe it's changed in V13 SP1, but I don't have the time now to do some testing. I also noticed there are now popups and some kind off drop-down windows. Can you link tags to these popups dynamically? In WinCC v7.3 you have the option tag prefix that can be used in a picture window. Do these popups have something simular?

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