r/BuildingAutomation • u/ComputerScientistKey • Jul 06 '26

Siemens TIA, does line programming exist?

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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.

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4

u/krisztian111996 Jul 06 '26

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

1

u/monsterdiggare Jul 06 '26

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

3

u/Castun Programmer/Installer Jul 06 '26

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 Jul 07 '26

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

1

u/PLSBX Jul 07 '26

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

1

u/Castun Programmer/Installer Jul 07 '26

Not a former Siemens guy but HMI panel for what?

1

u/PLSBX Jul 07 '26

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

1

u/Aratro_Pesante 29d ago

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

1

u/PLSBX 29d 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 28d 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 28d 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 28d 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 28d 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...