SIEMENS SIMATIC S7 + WINCC

Brief vision of Step 7

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What is a STEP 7 project?

In addition to other things, a STEP 7 project includes the following objects:

• Hardware Configuration

• Blocks

These objects are always included, regardless of the number of operating stations, modules and network.

What is included in STEP 7?

You create the project at an engineering station (ES). Several applications are contained in the ES. All applications feature a graphical user interface (GUI) to simplify operation and clearly show the configured data.

• Simatic Manager is the central application and the link portal for all other applications that you will use to create your entire project.

• HW Config contains the configuration of all system hardware, such as CPUs, power sources, communication cards.

• WinCC OS is the tool to configure the OS (operation station).

What is Simatic Manager?

Simatic Manager represents the central application within the system and is used to access all other applications that you need to configure your project. Simatic Manager and all other applications are interconnected.

What is the basic structure of Simatic Manager?

Simatic Manager has a structure similar to Windows Explorer:

• on the left side of the window, you will see the tree-shaped structure showing different objects, depending on the selected View.

• on the right side of the window, you will see details of the objects you have selected in the tree structure.

• Component View – represents the physical location in the memory of each object, for example, blocks. In Component View, you can immediately see which blocks belong to each AS (Automation System - default name given to each CPU in the system).

All operations that you perform in Simatic Manager are automatically saved on the system.

How to open Simatic Manager?

You can open Simatic Manager in two ways:

1 – Double click on the STEP 7 icon on your desktop.

2 – From the Start menu on SIEMENS SIMATIC products, select the SIMATIC Manager menu command.

When you start Simatic Manager, the project you had previously opened will be loaded automatically.

Project

Projects are:

• an organized set of data;

• stored in a private folder that includes files and subfolders;

• maintained by Simatic Manager and its related tools.

• projects contain data from at least one station (specific programmable application/configurable equipment);

Station

In a Simatic project a station can be:

• a PC (Simatic PC Station) for engineering (ES) or operation (OS - Operator System);

• an Automation System (AS - SIMATIC 400 Station, for example).

Projects are structured with the following hierarchy:

• can contain S7 programs;

• an S7 program contains exactly one “Blocks” folder and one “Sources” folder;

• the “Blocks” folder contains the blocks that are downloaded to the S7 CPU;

• the “Source Files” folder contains the source files of the programs created in different programming languages;

Automation Licence Manager

Manages licenses installed on the station.

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