Siemens Totally Integrated Automation Portal
Siemens TIA Portal is an extremely powerful programming platform. Siemens has truly achieved a “totally integrated automation” solution as all of their current generation PLCs, HMIs, and SCADA platforms are programmed using the TIA Portal from budget to high-end. The TIA Portal also contains many cool shortcuts which help maximize programming efficiency. Here are some of the top tips and tricks which can save any TIA Portal user development time.
Ladder Element Drag-to-Copy
Dragging and dropping ladder elements is an extremely efficient way to rearrange code, but what about duplicating? Hold the ctrl key to enable drag-to-copy
Ladder Tag Drag-to-Copy
Dragging and dropping entire elements is useful, but sometimes just the tag is needed on a different element. Click and drag on the tag itself to move it to another element. Hold ctrl while dragging the tag to copy.
SCL Surround With Element
Use the “Surround With” in the context menu to quickly add an additional SCL expression while simultaneously indenting the existing code appropriately.
SCL Format Text Automatically
Nested IF statements, loops, and CASE statements can easily become hard to read when not indented correctly. Automatically indent SCL code using the Format Selected Text Automatically button.
WinCC HMI Copy Paste Alignment
Many HMI screens contain identical objects which are uniformly spaced. Simply copy, paste, and align the second object, and each subsequent object will be placed with the same spacing.
WinCC HMI Select Overlapping Objects
Overlapping or overlayed objects are also extremely common on HMI screens. In order to cycle through a stack of screen elements, hold the alt key and left click the top object.
Share your favorite TIA Portal tips and tricks in the comments! Contact us if you have questions about Siemens TIA Portal or have a project in mind.