Hi all,
I am sure this has been done many times but I am relatively new to Siemens so please bear with me.
I am using Simatic manager Step 7 for the plc programming and TIA portal 13 sp1 for the HMI (TP1200 Comfort panel), this communicates via Profinet network, we have 96 physical inputs and 64 physical outputs on the PLC.
What I would like to do is add maintenance pages to the HMI to give a graphical representation of the plc inputs and outputs, most of the inputs are assigned to various DB’s but not all and the outputs are the same.
So page 1 would be input card 1 would be I0.0, I0.1, I0.2, I0.3, I0.4, I0.5, I0.6, I0.7 and then I1.0, I1.1 etc, etc, for every input and output on the PLC.
My question is, do I add all the physical Tags individually into the HMI as (Tag 1 - Input I0.0 = I0.0) or would I be best using the DB addressing where possible (DB1020.DBX0.0). is there a preference or best practice to use Physical or DB addressing, would one be more reliable, use less resources, quicker over the network? As i will have over 200 tags will this slow things down or cause problems?
So for the representation of the I/O i am using a rectangle, in Display / Appearance and setting this to change colour as the tag changes state, all basic stuff
I have done one screen and it works on both DB and physical, but as I am new to Siemens i am not sure what is the preferred technique to use before i do the rest of the screens