Tia portal recommendation for v16

Tia Portal recommendation for V16 Preface The last 10 years I have seen a lot of changes made in the different versions of TIA Portal Some of them became better and some became worse In general from my opinion TIA portal seems to make steps forward But I and my colleagues and also other programmers we speak don’t really like to be heard on the feedback we give So I started making notes of what I think should be improved in the future versions or updates and hope someone with some influence in the development of TIA Portal read this document and likes some of the features I mention in this document that will make our life as a programmer more easy (and we don’t need to make inefficient workarounds, as I no they are for some of these remarks) I mentioned some of this features already years ago to automation support but then i got the answer: Well we noted this to development but you will never hear again from it, maybe its in the next Version This is just a small list that I made up in an afternoon, and I understand that everyone would like to have something else and probably (I hope) you also have a major list with features where your now developing on I tried to keep this list as general as possible so from my opinion everyone (across the world) should provide from these features (So WinCC advanced & Professional and Safety_advanced are left out of this document despite the fact that I would love to see a Lreal values and preconditions for math and move instructions in safety ) My list of V16 Recommendations is free of charge for you Tia Portal developers (I will even not charge you for everything that did not work in the last 10 years) I don’t need any credits for this (but love to see a donate Jouke button in Tia Portal ) and I not have any patent/copyrights on any of this ideas I just would love to see all of it in the future versions When one of these point isn’t clear just give me a call At the end we all want a perfect TIA Portal that does the programming for us Tia notes and recommendations for V16 20-8-2019 Jouke Wijdoogen: Eyemation B.V the Netherlands www.plcprogrammmer.com Index Notes and recommendation for V16 Preface FBD 1.Disable automatic jump on enter Jump labels in empty networks Multiple SUB inputs on the SUB instruction 4 Tmail_C send LOG/CSV file instead of the BIN file as attachment Compiler: 5.Acknowledge warnings General Bigger minimize maximize and close button in the upper right corner 7.Auto save 8.Find&Replace with incremental counter 9.Replace all is not working on tag tables 10 Let TIA use all the power I have in my notebook 11.Remove the T# input also in the data blocks time values 12 Online toggle Boolean by double clicking annoying popup 13 Auto fill decimal place by offline real value in datablock 14.Save archive on same location as Project folder 15 Tia portal updater 16.Safety i/o state during commission i/o check 17 Monitoring values in datablock 18.Whats new in this version ? New Instructions 19.GetProjectName 20.String to SymbolName 21.New feature to indirect addressing in optimized db’s 22.Reset_Array / Reset_Struct Analizing 23.CycleTime analyser Hardware 24.TM_Count 1x24V 25 T models for ET200SP CPU’s and 1505/7/8 software controllers HMI 26 Appearance Tag suggestion from the event Tia notes and recommendations for V16 20-8-2019 Jouke Wijdoogen: Eyemation B.V the Netherlands www.plcprogrammmer.com 27 Boolean should be an button instead of i/o field 28 Default disable focus 10 29 KTP 300 smallest font size depending on windows settings 10 30 Shortcut also to HMI tag, like the green arrow for PLC tag 10 31 COPY paste alarms doesn’t copy the triggertag 10 32.Remember screen zoom settings And open all following screens in the same zoom 10 33 Representation setting for time values 10 34 That never ending AM/PM or 24 clock setting 10 Tia notes and recommendations for V16 20-8-2019 Jouke Wijdoogen: Eyemation B.V the Netherlands www.plcprogrammmer.com FBD 1.Disable automatic jump on enter When assigning inputs and outputs from FB’s or instructions The focus field jumps automatically to the next unassigned input or output When your network is larger than your monitor (mostly the case when programming FBD) This is not preferred as the entered value disappears from the screen and we need to scroll back to the part of the network where we were working at I can’t understand why this feature is in there, Jumping to the next field is mostly for programmers that love to use the keyboard and don’t need to hold there mouse but as this generation is based on Drag and Drop programming and not on typing text in i/o fields it would be nice to have a setting to turn this off Jump labels in empty networks It’s not possible to insert a Label in an empty network As networks mostly are used for programming code, they are also used for headers between the networks Just a simple empty network with a nice title introducing you what’s to find in the networks below As we mostly jump to parts of the code that have a header I would like to place the Label in that empty network, so when I add some networks below the jump functions remains and I don’t have to replace the Label When it’s to prevent programmers for making mistakes than a warning should be enough (there are plenty of them in TIA ) Multiple SUB inputs on the SUB instruction Could you also create multiple inputs on the SUB instruction just like there is on the ADD instruction Tmail_C send LOG/CSV file instead of the BIN file as attachment Tmail_C attachment is send in a BIN file that is not readable without some conversion software and is only to much limited to an array So the receiver can’t anything with this it would be very useful if we could just attach the LOG/CSV file That now only is downloadable from the webserver Tia notes and recommendations for V16 20-8-2019 Jouke Wijdoogen: Eyemation B.V the Netherlands www.plcprogrammmer.com Compiler: 5.Acknowledge warnings Tia Portal has a warning for everything the programmer did while programming, and that is a good thing, better safe than sorry Everyone knows the warnings: • • • • protection level warning Overlappping items in the HMI Direct adressing is used Output is used as input.(Especially when you have converted Step7 v5.5 program) When we have for example every time during compiling 250 warnings that we are not willing to solve than (not unrealistic after migrating V5.5 S7-300 to a new Tia portal S7-1500) it’s very difficult to find a new warning when it becomes 251 between them all So it would be nice if we Could Acknowledge the warnings (whit a simple checkbox after the warning) and at the end the compilation we get an ,Compiling finished (errors: 6; warnings: Acknowledged: 250) And or a “Show/hide acknowledged warnings” Button to disable the ack Warnings like there is now for the default warnings,alarms,information in the compile view General Bigger minimize maximize and close button in the upper right corner All windows programs have similar buttons in the titlebar of the program for minimize maximize and close Running all windows programs i'm able to move my mouse to the top right corner and click to close the program But in this software you silly designers made the buttons a little smaller and lower so we miss the button at first click and need to be verry precice to close minimize or maximize the program For the look and feel it would be nice if it works the same 7.Auto save Ok, this one should give some headache to the head of development on Siemens, but need to be said It really is ridicules that TIA Portal after 10 years from being released still crashes It becomes less often but still happens to much for software that costs Thousands of euro’s The fact that programmers learned to deal with it may never be an excuse Hitting the save button multiple times per hour is one of the solution to overcome the loose of data When you’re not able to solve the issues that TIA portal has than please make a workaround (just like we automation engineers always need to do) by adding an auto save option (of course that will not damage our data during a crash) Or make that project backup folder useful No one seems to know where it’s for Tia notes and recommendations for V16 20-8-2019 Jouke Wijdoogen: Eyemation B.V the Netherlands www.plcprogrammmer.com 8.Find&Replace with incremental counter Find And "Replace with incrementing counter" Would be nice to replace an object and the replaced object increments by Example: i copied past a Case instruction 100 times 1: Tempdata := data1; Than with simple Find= 1: and Replace= *1-100*: by clicking "ReplaceAll" its al numberd than i could something similar to data1 9.Replace all is not working on tag tables In a tag table the replace all button is greyed out 10 Let TIA use all the power I have in my notebook Why is Tiaportal during a startup, rebuild all or compile not using all my CPU speed? During rebuild all its only running on 15-20% 2,7GHZ @8 (but I have 4,6 @12) Also checks my i/o bus speed writing speed of harddisk Ram usage etc There are recommended PC configurations but I would be nice if there could be some information on what we need to the max the let TIA run at maximum speed It’s the only thing PLC programmers need, That Tia Runs at maximum speed to save compiling times On larger projects we have compiling times of 5-10 minutes on a siemens Field PG I would love to know what hardware piece I need to replace to reduce that time 11.Remove the T# input also in the data blocks time values On V15 you surprised us whit T# when we wanted to adjust timer values We of course preferred just to enter 3S instead of T#3S So you gave us an update but forget to change this in the data blocks (I’m running V15.1 update 2) Please also adjust it in the data blocks so we don’t need to fill it all in in milliseconds or need to add T# 12 Online toggle Boolean by double clicking annoying popup V15.1 During online monitoring i like the feature off double clicking on a Boolean to invert the status, but there is a popup that we have to accept, that includes a checkbox to disable the message It would be nice if we only have to mark the checkbox once a day/or every startup of Tia Portal, not every time we go online (or maybe just disable this popup from the settings) 13 Auto fill decimal place by offline real value in datablock Entering Real values (offline) in a Data block is not permitted when the decimal places are not filled, it would save time if the decimal places than automatically is set to (just like when your adjusting Real value online) Tia notes and recommendations for V16 20-8-2019 Jouke Wijdoogen: Eyemation B.V the Netherlands www.plcprogrammmer.com 14.Save archive on same location as Project folder Why is it not possible anymore to save the archive file in the same folder as where the project folder is ? (yes because of the name, but it’s a different type of file so should not be a problem) 15 Tia portal updater Why does searching for updates sometimes more than hours to see if there are updates and sometimes less than minutes ? 16.Safety i/o state during commission i/o check Would like to monitor safety i/o by fiscal state and not by safety state (better for commissioning) During i/o check it’s terrible that we cant see the stat of i/o that have a channel fault or are configuring as 2oo1 I can see all the i/o on my PG during a i/o check so I would also like to see if the Safety inputs come in like they were expected Its annoying to walk though the whoile installation to check this i/o on the hardware itself 17 Monitoring values in datablock When monitoring value is the first column in a DB after the SymbolicName It does not show up when starting monitoring When starting monitoring it opens the monitoring values column hidden cause by the horizontal slider that moves 18.Whats new in this version ? Is there a release note available for the new Tia portal versions or updates ? A “Watch new” page would be nice, so we could see which efficient new features became available with the new update (or maybe a tip of the day) so we also learn about functions that are in the CPU, that we might never use because we didn’t know it was in there New Instructions 19.GetProjectName I noticed that the file name of the PLC project is viewed in the webserver, so it is somewhere in the PLC it would be nice if we could move this to an String datatype to show it on the HMI As filenames are mostly the Versions of the running software that can be monitored on the HMI Just like the function “GetSymbolName” Tia notes and recommendations for V16 20-8-2019 Jouke Wijdoogen: Eyemation B.V the Netherlands www.plcprogrammmer.com 20.String to SymbolName Would be nice to have a new datatype “SymbolicName” so there could become a instruction String to symbolname This way we could by manipulating strings creating a pointer for indirect addressing Like we had on Non optimized db’s by direct addressing to offset addresses 21.New feature to indirect addressing in optimized db’s As with optimized Data blocks indirect addressing with a pointer is not possible, like we had in nonoptimized Data blocks with a pointer to the offset i would be nice to have a function that could this for us when it's not possible because of the new alignment of the data in the DataBlock than you probably could make a datatype like an Array, where we could change the symbolic object/Tag names within the array So we can program still verry efficient with a small amount of code by direct adressing to a specific point in the array, and the program keeps his readability by the symbolic address somewhere else in the program For recipes this would not be an issue, Recipe 1-50 is fine with a standard array But when you have for examples Sensors, than sensors 1-50 isn't nice to read in your code 22.Reset_Array / Reset_Struct Just like Reset_BF but than for Optimized Data blocks Now we have to make an exact empty copy of the Array or struct and move that in de Processing Array/Struct This could cost a lot of memory on big structures (or a loop that acces all the variables 1by1 that costs a lot of processing time.) Analizing 23.CycleTime analyser Could you add some kind of analyser to see which part of the program is consuming cycle time, this could help us optimizing our software more specific Hardware 24.TM_Count 1x24V -Would be nice if we could set a separation mark/decimal point in the measured value field so we can be precise and don’t have to the real calculation again in the userprogram Tia notes and recommendations for V16 20-8-2019 Jouke Wijdoogen: Eyemation B.V the Netherlands www.plcprogrammmer.com 25 T models for ET200SP CPU’s and 1505/7/8 software controllers We mostly use the ET200SP and the 1507 software controllers so would be nice if T models also become available in those series HMI 26 Appearance Tag suggestion from the event As very often on a button the appearance tag is exactly the same tag as one of the event tags I would save lot of time if we could quickly assign the same tag used in the events to the appearance tag Maybe as a quick selection in a pulldown, or just as a pre-setting auto fill-in the tag field 27 Boolean should be an button instead of i/o field Drag an dropping boolean from the plc program into the HMI screen results in a i/o fields instead of a button A button would make more sense I can’t imagine why I would like to represent Booleans as a numeric value Would be nice if there could be a pre-setting so it will be directly connected to an specific event and/or animation Tia notes and recommendations for V16 20-8-2019 Jouke Wijdoogen: Eyemation B.V the Netherlands www.plcprogrammmer.com 28 Default disable focus I never really understood why there is a default focus width of pixels for touch panels Now we disable this ourself for each button individually As I assume no one really uises this than it would be nice if the focus width could be by default 29 KTP 300 smallest font size depending on windows settings I don’t know if this still is the case as the Last ktp300 I programmed was on V14 When using the smallest font size on a KTP300 and windows monitor setting is set on 125% then the text become unreadable So it seems like there is a relation between the windows monitor settings on the PG en the way the HMI software is downloaded In my opinion this never may be the case When I download software from my PG to a device, it should be downloaded exactly the same way as any other programmers download the exactly same software (windows had standard 125% monitor scale settings) 30 Shortcut also to HMI tag, like the green arrow for PLC tag it would be nice if there is a shortcut to the HMI tag properties from the object properties where it is used (just like the PLC shortcut) Mostly for setting limits and update times 31 COPY paste alarms doesn’t copy the triggertag When copy past of the HMI alarms from one display to the other, the trigger tag is not paste in the other display 32.Remember screen zoom settings And open all following screens in the same zoom When working on a screen we set it to a zoom level so it fits in the TIA portal window When I close and re-open the screen then the zoom level is set back to 100% Would be nice if it could be remembered automatically, and the following screens that will be made or opened should be opened in the same Zoom level 33 Representation setting for time values Representation setting for time values in the HMI If a time variable is needed on the HMI than we always need to scale the value from milliseconds to seconds/minutes/hours etc Would be nice if we could set the Properties>Format>Format pattern: directly to seconds/minutes/hours 34 That never ending AM/PM or 24 clock setting As the regional settings are kind of referenced to the clock setting, we sometimes need to set wrong regional settings to get the clock that our customer/ the end user wants Or need to change settings in the HMI itself.; I assume that there probably is a standard in the world of which region uses which settings That is used to set the standard for simatic HMI Tia notes and recommendations for V16 20-8-2019 Jouke Wijdoogen: Eyemation B.V the Netherlands www.plcprogrammmer.com But as it never really fits, it would be much easier if we could change the clock setting on the clock itself in the project (simply in the properties set the AM/PM or 24H) Tia notes and recommendations for V16 20-8-2019 Jouke Wijdoogen: Eyemation B.V the Netherlands www.plcprogrammmer.com