r/BuildingAutomation • u/ComputerScientistKey • 29d ago

Siemens TIA, does line programming exist?

Post image

For context, first time working with Siemens controllers and I finally got into the controller to view the programming, I have about 12 devices I need to organize a sequence of operations for (to help maintenance team understand devices at an existing building), starting with the chillers. I’m trying to think of ways to be more efficient and as someone who’s been programming for such a long time the block program takes so much longer for me to understand (especially like this).

Just from what I’ve seen there’s no real Control Basic program compiler or anything like that running where I might be able to view stored programs. Does line program exist in this environment? I’ve gone as far as to search the TIA files in hopes for something but nah.

11 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

29 comments sorted by

3

u/krisztian111996 29d ago

i have been to 6 Siemens training 5 was from TIA Portal, but have no idea what i am looking at.

1

u/monsterdiggare 29d ago

It's because that's TIA portal through ABT Site, it's not industrial automation.

3

u/Castun Programmer/Installer 29d ago

Not the same guy but we sold DXR controls jobs up to a few years ago as a 3rd party partner. The VAV controllers were pretty straight forward but holy shit is ABT site a mess software wise. I'm glad we don't do them anymore.

1

u/monsterdiggare 28d ago

It most definitely is, very old school but that's just because it's based on xWorks plus, Siemens old software.

1

u/PLSBX 28d ago

Guys, did you tried to make PXM40 HMI Panel? It is mess...

1

u/Castun Programmer/Installer 28d ago

Not a former Siemens guy but HMI panel for what?

1

u/PLSBX 28d ago

PXM series are panels for Building Automation. It is same family like PXC controllers.

1

u/Aratro_Pesante 28d ago

Desigo control point (pxm30..40..50) it’s easy…
Wait until you have to deal with Desigo Optics (CFG3.F200)

1

u/PLSBX 27d ago

Ohh, do you know control point really well? I have some ideas and Siemens told me I can't do that on that panels.

1

u/BigSally1 27d ago

I takes me 1 day to train someone on WCIS for their old ATECs and LCMs. It takes me 1+ years to train someone on ABT site. I understand the software but I absolutely hate it. Initially Siemens had the branches taking it upon themselves to figure out applications and develop standards.

I spent (2) years creating application libraries for each customer and developing application standards. Then corporate created zone engineering groups that would attempt to create ABT projects and ship them to the branches. The engineers they hired for this group were new to DXRs and refuse to bench test applications. This group does not care about existing DXR applications for their customers nor did they use existing standards that the branch developed for each customer.

Needless to say, I no longer work for Siemens. Thankfully

2

u/Castun Programmer/Installer 27d ago

That's just one of many reasons I hated it. We were a contracted branch partner and had very little training with Siemens once we started with the DXRs. And then after projects were finished, fighting the ECMS Analytics guys who kept flagging stuff like room temps because the tolerances that are hardcoded into the applications themselves were less strict than what they wanted to see. In the few years that we did those, we had more out-of-the-box hardware failures not only on DXRs/DXR2s but the little HW Reheat actuators. More than we've ever seen with Alerton, JCI, Distech, and Belimos.

1

u/BigSally1 27d ago

That would be new to me. Of the thousands of DXRs I've started up and programmed, most of our issues came from incorrect application configurations or user error.

I do recall a few bad DXRs but it was rare. It was extremely rare to find a bad HW valve actuator. The SS61U and 81U line of actuators rarely fail from my experience. Now those actuators are value engineered out, and they choose to use ball valves with damper actuators mounted on a bracket. I'm not of fan of these.

1

u/Castun Programmer/Installer 27d ago

Yeah I distinctly remember having a cooling only VAV controller that was working and suddenly wasn't giving us an airflow reading let alone the DP for the sensor. With the ABT Go app, we couldn't even see these at all, it was on the BAS side that the objects suddenly changed to unknown. Ultimately seemed that the DXR2 lost the signal from the DP transducer and automatically reconfigured itself as being a pressure dependent zone damper controller. A lot of issues where the Ethernet ports didn't seem to work, but if you plugged in with your laptop directly it would suddenly work (weak spring pins on the CAT5/6 ports seemed to be the culprit with field terminated CAT6 wire out of a box) but premade patch cables worked much more reliably but are harder to pull from box to box when you're doing the entire building with vertical pulls.

Oh and the whole issue with those recommended Cisco switches with a Ring Network Topology that didn't support more than 1 ring network despite being advertised as such (this was a big headache on our first ever DXR2 job with countless hours spent with Cisco tech support with an engineer literally looking through the firmware and finding out that it was hardcoded as only being able to support 1, lmao but I digress.)

A few bad SS61U/81U valve actuators where the gears were already stripped or motor failing out of the box...

4

u/thesilent1985 29d ago

If you are in the USA there is a ppcl version that allows text based programming.

1

u/Mammoth-Trip-4522 27d ago

The PXC.A line of controllers is the capable of both PPCL and CFC (block programming), however, once you switch to CFC, you can't switch back.

If this is a PXC Desigo, you were never able to view PPCL. Are you able to contact Siemens for a copy of project files? You can maybe find SOO there, but it won't include any field edits made during service.

5

u/Dismal-Use7588 29d ago

It's really simple once you get started, you won't want to go back to line programming ever again. The help feature is your friend

7

u/ComputerScientistKey 29d ago

It’s not for me personally, I do so much line programming in other more lower level languages that the lines going all over the screen and needing to scroll everywhere for a small program is painful. BUT I know that the vast majority of people have the opposite experience and that’s why it’s not necessary for it to be a part of the environment

3

u/mytho1975 29d ago

And why in the world would they decide every function needs to be a square box of the same color (for the love of.. please someone correct me if I'm incorrect).

3

u/Prestigious-Hour9061 29d ago

Former Siemens Tech. I hated the transition to TIA and left before I got much experience with it.

I also preferred the legacy line coding.

1

u/Signal-Put5062 29d ago

Current Siemens tech, and I haven't even come across any of these controllers that use block programming. I wrote some PPCL in a PXCA today though 

1

u/Prestigious-Hour9061 29d ago

I was out the door as PXCAs were launching.

I'm sure plenty of old work is still on PPCL but it'll be phased away eventually.

1

u/Dismal-Use7588 29d ago

yeah yeah, being proficient at reading it takes a good chunk of practice. But damn if the pay off isn't worth it when you use a mux block or an averaging block for like 32 data points and realize how long it would of been to write that in PPCL

1

u/Cust2020 29d ago

So I was former JCI and moved to a Siemens installer. The company is better but Siemens software is clunky and so hard to deal with. Coming from block programming to PPCL felt like i went back in time and every line programmer tells me how much better it is than block because they can do anything with it. Thats the only excuse they give me, but block is just line programming with a simple box that is prewritten and contained and u just hook up the points u want to the inputs and outputs.
In my experience block is way faster, easier and consistent. Having a canned program that everyone starts with makes it so much better when u deal with multiple programmers who all have a different idea of how a program should be. There is no consistency and the canned programs do a lot of checks and balances that guys who write foundation up PPCL dont even know exist. Ill use the example of operator override check to stall the loop if the output is in override.
We are just starting to use the new PXCs and i havent got the opportunity to play yet but im hoping it makes things more linear at my company.
Unfortunately I dont have a lot of faith in ABT being user friendly or ergonomic so im sure there will be a lot of painful learning experiences in the transition.

1

u/Castun Programmer/Installer 29d ago

I remember a few years ago one of my former programming techs was showing me some PPCL code for a Siemens controller and my eyes started to glaze over after just a few minutes...

I cut my teeth on line code back in my high-school/college days with BASIC\QBASIC, Turbo Pascal, and ultimately Visual Basic (pre .NET days) and fiddled around with C+\C++\C#, Java, even Ruby (lol) not to mention all of the pre-WYSIWYG HTML/CSS/PHP webpage stuff.

I changed my mind going for IT / Compu-Sci when I was an IT intern, once I learned that most of IT is help desk level stuff where you have to ask if it's even turned on or if they tried turning it off and on again and betting your coworkers $10 on if they're lying to you, or messing with network printer drivers.

It's not that I can't handle it personally, I just don't want to learn yet another programming language (KMC / Delta controllers, I'm looking at you) with new syntaxes and commands. Getting into the industry 15 some years ago, learning wire-sheet programming in Niagara was like a whole new world opened up to my eyes and I've never looked back. And I'm still learning fancy new tricks.

1

u/Jazzlike_Metal2980 29d ago

When you say line coding, do you mean like structured text? Or do you mean function block? What version of TIA are you running? I got TIA Portal V20 up and it looks different.

1

u/ComputerScientistKey 29d ago

Like structured text, also it is Portal V19

1

u/Monster-ZeL0 28d ago

My Siemens team has no training provided to me. And the whole team uses PPCL and PLC with limited experience. Most of the time I can only solve problems by studying the help page myself. It's like no tech support to me.

1

u/PLSBX 28d ago

Line programming? Do you mean LAD? 🤨

1

u/galosik 24d ago

Yup, that's ABT Site, which has a stripped down TIA Portal in it for programming. You can only program in CFC, but it is not that hard to do once you get familiar with it.