TwinCAT 3 XAE (Extended Automation Engineering) takes advantage of the highly polished Microsoft Visual Studio as the programming environment. This is an extremely powerful piece of software typically used for creating custom .NET software, but Beckhoff has utilized it to program their PLCs. This provides very good tools for quickly creating, debugging, and dissecting code. This software will run on computers as old as Windows XP SP3 up to Windows 10. Best of all, they provide this programming software free of cost, available here.
The installer will first install the Visual Studio Shell, the light, free version of Visual Studio.
Afterwards, it will install the TwinCAT 3 programming environment plugin within Visual Studio.
Once the installation and restart are complete, the blue TwinCAT 3 config mode icon will appear. More information on this icon will be explained later.
Another version of TwinCAT 3 is the XAR, Extended Automation Runtime. This is only the runtime version of the software, not the programming environment, which should be installed on the plc, or target system. Installing the XAE also installs the XAR, allowing for simulation on the programming computer.
Once it is installed, continue on to create your first project.