Open standards, more powerful desktop computers, and lower cost software are making design, modeling, and automatic code generation for PLCs and PACs practical for improving automation.
Innovations in Product Life Cycle Management (PLM), modeling and simulation software are enabling virtual designs of machine, production lines and processes to avoid costly mistakes in actual implementation. The entire plant and controls can be commissioned virtually to find problems before committing to real machines and controls - reducing the time it takes to startup the manufacturing process and avoiding costly rework at production startup time.
Open communications between modeling, simulation, PLC software and controllers is essential to achieve wide adoption of virtual design methods.
The following illustrates progress made in modeling and automatic PLC/PAC code generation.
PLCopen XML Standard
The PLCopen XML interchange standard version 2.01 is an open (non-proprietary) data interchange standard that has been adopted by the AutomationML group as part of an initiative to offer a common, top level XML format for all plant data including topology data, 3D geometry, kinematic data, sequence description, and logic information. There are proprietary approaches to accomplish code generation from models, but they use proprietary interchange formats unique to the modeling software and specific PLC vendor’s products, and therefore limit application possibilities. The PLCopen standard provides a vendor neutral open standard to accomplish the objective of broad adoption.
The PLCopen XML schemas and documentation as well as an introduction are available free to anyone. The downloadable files include a 156 page explanation of the PLCopen XMLSchema and a 58 page document describing the standard and XML schema files.
AutomationML
AutomationML is gaining momentum as an overall standard for design and open plant information interchange. The goals of AutmationML are to reduce engineering costs, lower engineering time, open engineering data to protect investment, and lower entry barriers for innovative niche product & service vendors, seamless data transport, and data consistency. The AutomationML group notes that the economic driver for their efforts is that nearly 60% of the costs of automation control and robotics today are engineering and commissioning. Automation and controls members of the organization include ABB, Kuka, Siemens, and Phoenix Contact.
In addition to the PLCopen XML standard, AuotmationML has also adopted other standards including CAEX, COLLADA, and MathML.
CAEX
CAEX (Computer Aided Engineering Exchange) a neutral data format that allows storage of hierarchical object information such as the hierarchical architecture of a plant. CAEX is currently applied in the areas of process engineering, control engineering, oil & gas industry and manufacturing automation engineering. On 12 August 2008, the final version of IEC 62424 (Ed. 1.0) was published.
COLLADA - Digital Asset and FX Exchange Schema
COLLADA defines an open standard XML schema for exchanging digital assets among various graphics software applications that might otherwise store their assets in incompatible file formats. COLLADA documents describe digital assets as XML files, usually identified with a .dae (digital asset exchange) filename extension. www.collada.org
MathML
MathML (Mathematical Markup Language) is a low-level specification for describing mathematics as a basis for machine to machine communication. This specification, from the W3C group, is based on XML for describing mathematical notation and capturing both its structure and content. The goal of MathML is to enable mathematics to be served, received, and processed just as HTML has enabled this functionality for text.
More information will be available at the AutomationML User Conference which will take place on May 5-6, 2010 at ABB Forschungszentrum Ladenburg near Mannheim, Germany. At the conference, topics to be discussed include data formats, AutomationML concepts, developer workshops, tools for supporting AutomationML and future developments.
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar