Hi guys,

A friend of mine whose hobby it is to brew beer, has an S7 PLC to do some automation. Now he wants to add some more stuff, but he cant reach the guy who has previously written the program. I'm willing to write it, but it would be extremely helpful if I could just download the existing function blocks from the PLC and start from there. Now my question is simply if this is possible or not?

Thanks in advance,
Toon Van Lishout

 

Yes, it is possible. I believe the individual function blocks may be "Knowhow Protected" that is locked with a password, but I believe they'll still upload. So if all you want to do is add your stuff and maybe reuse some of the old blocks additional times, it should be fine even if they are.

 

Hi,

First of all, you would need the S7 Simatic Manager, the programming tool. And, you need MPI cable the least to connect to the PLC. Next, use the Simatic Manager to Upload the PLC.