A Software Agent for Automatic Creation of a PLC Program

Abstract

Using structured design techniques to design a Programmable Logical Control (PLC) program would decrease the time needed for debugging and produces a concise bug free code. This study is concerned with the design of a software agent for automatic creation of code for a PLC program that can be downloaded on a Siemens Step 7 series. The code is generated according to the syntax rules for the AWL Language, AWL is the abbreviation for the germen word Anweisungsliste which means Instruction List The proposed system uses object oriented approach to transfer the design specification into an object that adequately describes the system using the state based design technique. The industrial system specifications are supplied by the user through a simple Graphical User Interface (GUI) environment These specification define the attributes vales of an object oriented class describing the control system, all the functions needed to generate the code are encapsulated in the class.