viii Table of Contents

Dependency structure 46 Interfaces and the effects on

Parent/child relationships 47 running PLCs 54
Optimized data/non-optimized data 54
Instance and global data 48
Mixing optimized and non-optimized
Using instance and global data 49 data56
Accessing data 51 Passing data through interfaces 56
Configuration options 52
Summary62

3
Structures and User-Defined Types
What are structs and UDTs? 64 Passing InOut data as a single struct 79
Structs64 Structures in static and temporary
UDTs66 memory79
Creating static declarations of UDTs
Creating struct/UDTs – best or structs 80
practices69 Creating temporary instances of UDTs
Understanding what is required 69 or structs 80
Defining structure variables 70
Drawbacks of structs and UDTs 81
Finding commonalities between assets 72
Libraries81
Naming conventions 73
Lack of open protocol support 86
Simplifying interfaces with Cross-referencing86
structs/UDTs74 Overusing UDTs/structs 89
Passing inputs as a single struct 74
Summary89
Passing outputs as a single struct 78

Section 2 – TIA Portal – Languages,

Structures, and Configurations
4
PLC Programming and Languages
Getting started with languages 94 Selecting the best language 105
Available languages 94 Understanding the use case 105
Languages in program blocks 99 Memory management 112
Different language types 102