PLC coding conventions initiative launched

PLCopen's coding conventions meeting worked out ways to define a set of rules to provide a PLCopen proposal on how IEC 61131-3 should be used.

By PLCopen September 13, 2013

PLCopen’s meeting on coding conventions resulted in several working groups for different areas of interest, including:

  • Coding Guidelines (including naming conventions and rules)
  • Software quality issues and software consistency
  • Creating PLCopen compliant Function Blocks
  • Structuring and decomposition via SFC (do’s & don’ts)
  • Guidance for documentation in software programs
  • Library usage
  • Software development process

The key topic of the new PLCopen Coding Conventions working group is the definition of Rules, Coding Patterns and Guidance and how to use them in Industrial Automation. These rules will be published as a technical document and marketed by PLCopen.

The results of the working group should be based on the IEC 61131-3 1st and 2nd edition standard but should be easily extensible to the 3rd edition which was released in February 2013.

The aim is to define a set of rules and to provide a PLCopen proposal how these rules can be used. Nowadays large automation companies have their own rules but many mid-size companies or IEC 61131-3 beginners are very interested in using PLCopen guidelines. The rules are designed to help train users and can be a good basis for universities to help them teach IEC 61131-3 programming more efficiently. 

The next meeting will be held on October 1 in Frankfurt, Germany. Interested parties can still participate via contacting PLCopen.

PLCopen

www.plcopen.org 

– Edited by CFE Media. See more Control Engineering PLC and PAC stories.