Product description

The TwinCAT Automation Interface enables the automatic creation and manipulation of TwinCAT XAE configurations via programming/scripting code. The automation of a TwinCAT configuration is available through so-called automation interfaces which can be accessed from all COM-capable programming languages (e.g. C++ or .NET) and also from dynamic script languages - e.g. Windows PowerShell, IronPython or even legacy VBscript. These automation interfaces are bound to the Visual Studio Automation Model and extend Visual Studio with TwinCAT3 features.

Product description 1:

TwinCAT Automation Interface enables an efficient engineering process by giving customers the possibility to automate the configuration of a full TwinCAT solution.

Traditionally, a machine configuration had to be manually adapted to each new project or had even to be created from scratch, which could not only involve a tremendous amount of engineering time and therefore costs but is also error-prone because of human mistakes.

Product description 2:

With TwinCAT Automation Interface, the process of adapting TwinCAT configurations to a new environment or even create new TwinCAT configurations from scratch can be automated according to the customers needs.

Product description 3:

Readers should continue with the following topics:

Basics

Topic

Description

Creating/Loading TwinCAT XAE configurations

Describes how to create or open a TwinCAT configuration

Navigating TwinCAT XAE

Describes how to navigate through a TwinCAT configuration

Custom tree item parameters

Describes how to access custom parameters of an item. This is important to access configuration parameters of a TwinCAT tree item.

Implementing a COM message filter

Describes how to implement an own COM message filter to circumvent rejected COM calls

Best practice

Topic

Description

Creating and handling PLC projects

Describes how to handle PLC projects

Creating and handling PLC POUs

Describes how to handle PLC objects/code

Creating and handling PLC Libraries

Describes how to handle PLC libraries, repositories and placeholder

Creating and handling MOTION projects

Describes how to create TwinCAT Motion projects (NC-Task, Axes, ...)

Creating and handling EtherCAT devices

Describes how to create EtherCAT devices and connect them to an EtherCAT topology

Creating and handling TwinCAT Measurement

Describes how to handle TwinCAT Measurement projects.

Creating and handling TcCOM modules

Describes how to handle TcCOM modules.

Using templates

Describes the process of template generation and template usage.

Creating and handling network variables

Describes how to create network variables (publisher/subscriber variables)

Creating and handling Tasks

Describes how to create Tasks and link them with other objects (PLC-Projects, ...)

From offline to online configurations

Some IO devices need physical address information before the configuration can be activated. This article explains how to retrieve and set this information.

Accessing the Error List window of Visual Studio

The Error List can be very helpful for debugging and diagnostic purposes

Accessing window tabs in Visual Studio

Describes how to get access to Visual Studio windows.

Handling different versions of Visual Studio

Describes how different Versions of Visual Studio can be used for Automation Interface

Attaching to running Visual Studio instances

Demonstrates how you can attach to existing (already running) Visual Studio instances to use Automation Interface

Setting TwinCAT target platform

Describes how to set the TwinCAT target platform for compilation.

Additionally, this documentation also includes a full API reference of all interfaces. The How to and Sample sections offer a free composition of script code fragments, configuration steps and demo projects. They also contain an unsorted and growing list of "real-world" samples.