Tag Archives: tutorial

TwinCAT 3 Tutorial Complete

Over the past year I’ve been working on a TwinCAT 3 Tutorial, and with the posting of the 13th chapter about the TwinCAT 3 Scope View, I’m considering it “complete.” I’ve covered all the major topics that I wanted to cover.

Writing a tutorial like this was actually a learning experience for myself. Before I made any statement about the software I tried to validate my assumptions first, and many times I learned that I had preconceived notions about how it worked which may not have been completely accurate. If you’re a TwinCAT 3 programmer, then you need to know your tool set inside and out. If you’re not sure how something works, it’s best to setup a quick test and try it out. That’s one of the advantages of PC-based software: if you want to run a test, your office PC is a laboratory environment. Write some code and run it.

Thank you to everyone who offered feedback on the existing sections, and to those of you who kept pushing me to continue writing more. I sincerely hope this can be that missing link to take people from the world of traditional PLCs into the more interesting and ultimately more powerful world of PC-based control.

It looks like TwinCAT 3 has a viable future ahead of it. Interest seems to be growing over time (according to Google Trends, anyway):

That makes TwinCAT 3 a valuable skill to learn if you’re an integrator, and an interesting technology to investigate for existing plants.

Announcing: the TwinCAT 3 Tutorial

Some of you may have noticed the new section on this site: TwinCAT 3 Tutorial.

I’ll be building this over the next several weeks or months. I’m working on making it more detailed than the RSLogix 5000 Tutorial.

Rather than being an introduction to PLCs, I assume most readers are coming to the new tutorial with some automation experience and they really want to know what this new technology can do for them. I won’t be touching on every single feature of TwinCAT 3, but I certainly want to touch on most of the common ones, and particularly some advanced features that really set TwinCAT 3 apart from traditional PLCs.

As always I greatly appreciate any comments you have. Please send them to my email address (which you can find on the About page).

The RSLogix 5000 Tutorial

I’ve decided to create a tutorial for beginners getting started with RSLogix 5000 from Rockwell Automation. Part 1 is already posted: Creating a New Project. I will be filling in the rest over the next few weeks. I hope new automation graduates and experienced members of the automation industry who are migrating from another platform will both find something useful.

As always, I welcome any and all constructive feedback.