ALPHA-VISION® SoftPLC7
PC based emulation of programmable logic controllers
SoftPLC7 - The SIMATIC-compatible PC-based control system for all SIMATIC S7 applications: the communication to the automation process or to other external applications such as SIMATIC Manager or WinCC takes place using configurable interfaces.
The ALPHA-VISION® SoftPLC7 can be programmed using the SIMATIC Manager. All relevant data is taken from the STEP7-project, ensuring full programming compatibility to SIMATIC.
The key features are:
- Emulation of SIMATIC S7 functionality on a PC
- Compatibility to SIMATIC S7-300 or S7-400 instructions range
- Freeze / unfreeze and and slow motion of the running program
- Snapshot possibility of the current runtime data (e.g. data blocks, timers and counters)
- Multiple instantiation
Simulation
Simulation plays an increasingly important role in the automation. Meanwhile there are a series of simulation tools, with which the real technical process can be simulated on a PC.
Concerning the automation devices, either the real PLC, which is communicating with the simulation tool, can be used, or the PLC control unit will also be emulated.
The following shows how the real plant is emulated in the simulation environment, whereby the real PLC is emulated using the ALPHA-VISION® SoftPLC7.
The process is depicted by a suitable process simulation. The original control technology can be maintained and the control system is emulated using ALPHA-VISION® SoftPLC7.
The simulation functionalities of the SoftPLC7 are of major importance in this idea.
The ALPHA-VISION® SoftPLC7 can be remote controlled and supports functionalities such as freeze, unfreeze, stop, run, back tracking and slow motion.
Every ALPHA-VISION® SoftPLC7 runs as an independent process on the PC, emulating a SIMATIC S7. The ALPHA-VISION® SoftPLC7 can be instantiated multiple times, making it possible to emulate / simulate an entire distributed control system (a plant consisting of multiple S7 stations) on a single PC without changes to the STEP7 program.
The benefits of simulation are:
- Time and cost savings
- Minimization of down time
- Improvement of reliability through error simulation and control
- Efficient factory acceptance test (hardware emulation)
- Higher customer satisfaction through verification of quality
Multiple instantiation
Every ALPHA-VISION® SoftPLC7 runs as an independent process on the PC, emulating a SIMATIC S7. It is possible to run multiple SoftPLC7 on one computer at the same time, whereby every single SoftPLC7 executes its own STEP7 program. This offers the possibility to emulate / simulate an entire peripheral control system (with more than one S7-station on one PC). A simulation can be implemented with the best cost and efficiency according to the required instruction execution and cycle time.
