TIA Portal V17 Simulation & Licencing Trial - Problem

Hello Siemens Support .

I am trialing TIA Portal V17 and have been learning as fast as i can within the 21 days period.

Whilst the TIA portal application is working , I have created a HMI unified comfort application to accompany the 1200 series PLC , I do not seem to have comms between the PLC and HMI in simulation mode.

One annoying thing keeps popping up is that when i monitor the HMI application using WinCC Unified Runtime , i amd getting a message stating there is no valid licence .(missing No. 163 ) , along with another pop up every few minutes that my S7 TIA Portal has 13 days left for the trial.

Q- IS this the reason the simulation displays the artwork but doesnt communicate ? The tags look good , the connection looks good, PLC is in Run Mode. HMI connection is on same subnet as HMI.

Ps - does TIA portal use GPUintensely ? I have 48GB ram on Icore 7 ( 7GB in use for TIA )..but since my PC is massively slow on TIA ?? - why , as Omron CX-One and Rockwell RS & Logix 5000 is fast ...so i am stumped at why TIA is like im on a i486 ! . My laptop is Thinkpad T16 with all SSD . No special graphics card installed - thats why i ask regarding performance experience ( painfully slow )

Any assisstance before i runout of trial time would be appreciated.

Hello stu_mcleod145,

First of all, please note that the license you see "WinCC Unified PC RT - V17.0 (missing number: 163)" refers to a license independent of the TIA Portal V17 trial. If you do not want this window to appear, you must purchase this license, although if you are only going to simulate, you can close the message and that's it.

Even so, this should not be the problem for not communicating. According to what you attached, it seems that the HMI connection is correct.

Check in the properties of the S7-1200 that the box "Only allow secure PG/PC and HMI communication" is unchecked. This box is under "Protection & Security > Connection mechanisms" and as of TIA Portal V17 and S7-1200 with firmware ≥ V4 it is no longer necessary because the secure connection is implemented automatically.

As for TIA Portal being slow, I don't really know what to tell you, but I am attaching the software and hardware requirements required: General software and hardware requirements

Many thanks !

Not seeing exactly the same check box you mentioned but - this would seem to tell me I already should have full access. 

It must be something else. Ill try making a new project entirely incase some how ive corrupted the comms . BTW - I am using Simulation for BOTH PLC & HMI. Cheers 

Thankyou for your reply and efforts.

Its strange how i never had the licence nags in the first week of trial ... i come home from work and use it in the evenings in my spare time till midnight each evening. 

As for performance, my PC eats the minimum spec. Its slow to start the pc now considerably since installing TIA aswell , like a good 15 secs minimum added to boot time to desktop display, and thats immediate after install - ive had this Lenovo T16 Gen 1 with 48 gb ram / 2TB SSD for two years and its been fast daily - it is clean and is purely a programming machine , not a web surfing crate.

The only thing i can think of is the Graphics card is poor ( Integrated ) .

Nothing i can do i guess. Hopefully not using Simulation speeds things up considerably , BTW , I am using Simulation for BOTH PLC & HMI . The reasons are simple, IF i get the job i quoted for & PO comes in, I will buy the latest TIA + Licence to program the 1215 and 10" Unified Comfort screen.

Thanks again, much appreciated.

Hello Stephan & JB S98 - after watching so many online videos and reading siemens documents im still at a loss . There is ONE thing that nags me and its the moment i go to access the Runtime for the HMI unified on my PC in simulation , I type in Edge Browser .. https://localhost ..or https://127.0.0.1 ..and it comes up wth Not a secure connection . 

Relating to not having a trusted cert i would imagine. 

Is this the reason that Communication would not work between the HMI ( simulated ) and the PLC (simulated ) . 

Q - in a Simulated environment , Should i be able to PING the addresses of the two devices here ?

ie PLC192.168.1.100 , HMI 192.168.1.101 , ( my local host address is my local la assigned IP on wifi - 192.168.1.10 . 

 stu_mcleod145

Stefan Arcularius

Hi stu_mcleod145,

The licensing of WinCC Unified PC Runtime is based on the number of PowerTags required. I have not yet used a test license for WinCC Unified PC Runtime, but your message says that it only covers 500 PowerTags. If you use the context menu for your panel within the project tree and select 'Properties…', you will find the number of PowerTags used under 'General > Information'.

The license warning does not affect the functionality of the system. I assume you are using a real PLC (not a simulation) and therefore you need to configure your interface to make communication work. Please have a look at the FAQ 'Setting the PG/PC interface for WinCC communication with the controller'. Please also make sure that your PLC is configured with the correct date and time. This is important because the communication is secured by using certificates that have a validity period.

TIA Portal is a very comprehensive software framework. Probably one of the most comprehensive software projects done in Visual Studio. Although the development does a lot to improve the performance, the software has high requirements and still not a real sufficient performance.

Kind regards
Stefan

Stephan - THANKS for the tip regarding Certificates. In the end , it would seem i had everything correct part from Windows Certifictes that would be acceoted in the Unified RT. I could not find in the end how to add the certificate that allowed Local Host to be accepted . I created a brand new project , 3 tags in PLC , 3 in HMI , and still the project would throw the aspect of a Not Trusted website ( 127.0.0.1 ) be an Insecure website etc . The ONLY thing that worked in my case was to fully uninstall all of TIA Portal & Simulation , reinstall , and this time i was prompted with a page that created a Certicate , of which I said YES PLEASE !!

Immediately my projects that i had created in Trial were wunning correctly on Simulation in PLC and HMI with Unified RT . I was hoping it was the Time and Date - that was not an easy thing to find either , but the certificate generation was the problem. Thankyou again. Cheers Stu