Navigation Window
The 'Navigation Window' is the centralized control interface of the TwinCAT Simulation Manager. It embraces all integrated functionalities and enables the browsing through the TwinCAT Simulation Manager configuration. The shown navigation tree is closely harmonized with the configuration tree of the TwinCAT System Manager so that the user recognizes the structure of the machine configuration - but is extended in terms of supporting distributed systems and simulation configurations.
The principle tasks of the 'Navigation Window' are:
- Navigating through the distributed system and accessing further programming / configuration and debugging tools and applications
- Management of the Original and Simulation profile
- Configuring and generating simulations for various components (e.g. axes, PLCs, IOs and Devices)
An example for a navigation tree shown in the 'Navigation window' can be seen within Figure 1.
All shown items that are bound to simulation settings (e.g. Variables / Symbols, Axes, Devices, PLC projects, ...) are marked with a red 'S' in their icon.
The different functionalities of the TwinCAT Simulation Manager are triggered mainly via the 'Navigation Window' context menu. Depending in the selected item in this view, the context menu can contain the commands shown in Table 1.
Requirements
Menu entry | Click context | Description |
|---|---|---|
Create Simulation PLC-Project | Original PLC selected, Simulation PLC not assigned | A Template Simulation PLC project is created and bound to the selected Original PLC (see Create Simulation Project). |
Add Simulation Variables ... | Original PLC selected, Simulation PLC assigned | Maintains new Symbols of the Original PLC into the Simulation PLC (see Add Simulation Symbols). |
Download PLC Symbols | PLC selected | Downloads the *.tpy Symbol information from the target and store them in the local cache of the simulation project. Internal data will be updated. |
Import PLC Project | PLC selected | Imports an "external" PLC Control project for local (cached) access. Be sure that the PlcControl project is the actual project running on the target! |
Open PlcControl | PLC selected | Opens the PLCControl application for the specified PLC. Precondition is, that the *.pro file was created by the simulation manager (via the Create Simulation Project command), or was imported by the Import PLC Project |
Rescan | PLC selected | Rescans the symbols of the PLC project |
Ping | Target System selected | Pings the target system with a UDP-message. If the target is connected to the same subnet and is running, the Ping will succeed. |
AdsPing | Target System selected | Pings the target system via ADS. In addition that the target is reachable via UDP, both systems must run a TwinCAT environment (in 'Run' or 'Config' mode) and both systems must refer each other via ADS Routes. |
Open System Manager | Target System Selected | Opens the System Manager on the locally cached configuration (*.tsm) downloaded from the target. This configuration should be always the actual configuration of the target. |
Download current configuration | Target System Selected | Downloads and caches the 'Current Configuration' from the target. |
PlcExplorer | Taget System Selected | Shows a dialog-browser showing the current PLC runtimes of the target. |
WebConfiguration | Target System Selected | Opens the WebConfiguration HTML page of the target. If this service is not supported and/or the Web-Server is not running on the target, an error message will be displayed. |
Disable | Device(s) Selected | Disables the Device(s) for the simulation profile |
Enable | Device(s) Selected | Enables the Devices(s) for the simulation profile |
Simulation | Axis Selected | Decouples the Axis in Simulation Mode and sets an 'Simulation Encoder'. |
Properties | All | Opens the Properties dialog. |
Table 1: Context Menu commands
A few examples for the Context Menu on the most important items for the Simulation project are given in the following.
