I was wondering if anyone has carried out a comparison between CODESYS V3 and TIA V13. I am new to the automation industry and have been tasked with carrying out an evaluation of CODESYS. The only platform I have used is TIA and DELTAV, so I was going to compare CODESYS with TIA. Any guidance or advice would be greatly appreciated as dont know where to start,
Regards
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Below is my comparison. To summarize it in a sentence - TIA is horrible.
First of all, 3 of the Codesys languages - SFC, CFC, IL - are missing. You have only ST(named SCL in TIA), FBD and Ladder. And in some cases, lake OB's, only FBD and Ladder.
May be the most prominent in TIA is the absence of a generic global search. You can only search one block/POU at a time.
Indeed, you can do project-wide search for variables and block names with the cross-reference tool, and it's even better than in Codesys. But is for variables and block names only. There is no way to search project wide for comments, partial variable names or anything else. For me this alone is enough to avoid TIA and use it only if inevitable.
Compared to Codesys, testing and debugging in TIA portal is a nightmare.
- You can't change variables from the IDE, unless you add them to a special table first, then you have to check and uncheck boxes etc. - this is extremely annoying and time consuming. What I can do in half a second in Codesys takes like 15-20 seconds in TIA.
- In the simplified (Basic) version of TIA portal you can't set breakpoints and execute code step by step.
- No visualisations. You can use a HMI panel emulation for the purpose, but it's not the same.
It's possible to have empty spaces in program/FB/function/variable names. Because of that, when used in code, they have to be enclosed in double quotes. You have no idea how confusing and annoying is that. This is a piece of actual ST code:
"test1" := NOT "test1";
"TSEND_C_DB"( REQ := "Data_block_1".REQ );
There is no automatic variable declaration.
Variables can't be declared in a free text form, only in tables. It's not possible to paste many variables at once from a text file or excel sheet, this has to be done one piece at a time.
Some concepts are truly weird.
Most examples you can find are in FBD
I can continue, but I guess the above is pretty much enough.
There are some positive things though. For example the drag & drop support in TIA is really good, and you can drag almost everything almost everywhere. HMI integration is good too.
I have to say that I have much more experience with Codesys than with TIA. Maybe there are ways to overcome some of the mentioned disadvantages, which I'm not aware of. But my overall impression is that Codesys is far better simply because I'm far more productive with it.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Hi Guys,
I was wondering if anyone has carried out a comparison between CODESYS V3 and TIA V13. I am new to the automation industry and have been tasked with carrying out an evaluation of CODESYS. The only platform I have used is TIA and DELTAV, so I was going to compare CODESYS with TIA. Any guidance or advice would be greatly appreciated as dont know where to start,
Regards
Below is my comparison. To summarize it in a sentence - TIA is horrible.
First of all, 3 of the Codesys languages - SFC, CFC, IL - are missing. You have only ST(named SCL in TIA), FBD and Ladder. And in some cases, lake OB's, only FBD and Ladder.
May be the most prominent in TIA is the absence of a generic global search. You can only search one block/POU at a time.
Indeed, you can do project-wide search for variables and block names with the cross-reference tool, and it's even better than in Codesys. But is for variables and block names only. There is no way to search project wide for comments, partial variable names or anything else. For me this alone is enough to avoid TIA and use it only if inevitable.
Compared to Codesys, testing and debugging in TIA portal is a nightmare.
- You can't change variables from the IDE, unless you add them to a special table first, then you have to check and uncheck boxes etc. - this is extremely annoying and time consuming. What I can do in half a second in Codesys takes like 15-20 seconds in TIA.
- In the simplified (Basic) version of TIA portal you can't set breakpoints and execute code step by step.
- No visualisations. You can use a HMI panel emulation for the purpose, but it's not the same.
It's possible to have empty spaces in program/FB/function/variable names. Because of that, when used in code, they have to be enclosed in double quotes. You have no idea how confusing and annoying is that. This is a piece of actual ST code:
"test1" := NOT "test1";
"TSEND_C_DB"( REQ := "Data_block_1".REQ );
There is no automatic variable declaration.
Variables can't be declared in a free text form, only in tables. It's not possible to paste many variables at once from a text file or excel sheet, this has to be done one piece at a time.
Some concepts are truly weird.
Most examples you can find are in FBD
I can continue, but I guess the above is pretty much enough.
There are some positive things though. For example the drag & drop support in TIA is really good, and you can drag almost everything almost everywhere. HMI integration is good too.
I have to say that I have much more experience with Codesys than with TIA. Maybe there are ways to overcome some of the mentioned disadvantages, which I'm not aware of. But my overall impression is that Codesys is far better simply because I'm far more productive with it.