Top 5 Control Engineering articles March 6-12: PID learning, control system programming, Engineers’ Choice, more

Articles about PID learning, standardized control system programming, the Engineers' Choice winners, multi-platform fluency, and ladder logic were Control Engineering’s five most clicked articles from March 6-12. Miss something? You can catch up here.

By Chris Vavra March 13, 2017

The top 5 most read articles online, from Mar. 6-12 for Control Engineering, covered PID learning, standardized control system programming, the Engineers’ Choice winners, multi-platform fluency, and ladder logic. Links to each article below. 

1. The PID learning process

While there are many excellent loop tuning methods available, many practitioners prefer tweaking proportional-integral-derivative (PID) tuning constants or using rules-of-thumb rather than doing the required step test and data analysis. 

2. Standardizing control system programming with IEC 61131-3

For the first time in the history of industrial controls, industrial control system (ICS) programming—regardless of the controller type—can be implemented with the same standard, and the programs created with that standard easily can be transported from one compliant control system to another. 

3. 2017 Engineers’ Choice Awards: Spotlight on innovation

The 30th annual Control Engineering Engineers’ Choice Awards shines a light on 28 categories of control, instrumentation, and automation products, revealing the best of those introduced in 2016 as chosen by you, Control Engineering’s print and digital audience.

4. Four reasons to be fluent in multiple platforms

Being fluent in multiple platforms can be a helpful tool in the automation field for engineers and integrators and can give the engineer the ability to solve more problems and be a better, more rounded engineer.

5. Ladder logic 305: ASCII and strings

American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) and strings are designed to turn printable characters into numbers that programmable logic controller (PLCs) can deal with and are commonly used in the U.S.

The list was developed using CFE Media’s web analytics for stories viewed on controleng.com, February 27 to March 5, for articles published within the last two months.

Chris Vavra, production editor, CFE Media, cvavra@cfemedia.com.


Author Bio: Chris Vavra is web content manager for CFE Media and Technology.