You might be interested in VisSim from Visual Solutions Inc. (www.vissim.com).
Diana Bouchard
******************************************************************** Diana C. Bouchard Pulp and Paper Research Institute of Canada (Paprican) Process Control Group 570 St Johns Boulevard Pointe Claire Quebec H9R 3J9 Canada phone: (514) 630 4100 x2376 fax: (514) 630 4120 email: [email protected] *******************************************************************
You can use Citect to simulate the control system (sotware PLC) but you would have to write code (cicode) to simulate the processes. If you want to simulate the processes you could use somthing like matlab/simulink.
See TrySim (http://www.trysim.de) it simulates a machine or process and PLC (Step7) (unfortunately only the German version as demo is available)
Have fun
Jacek Reiner ---------------------------------------------- Wroclaw University of Technology Institute for Production Eng. & Automation Lukasiewicza 3/5; 50-371 Wroclaw; Poland phone:++48 71 3202822; fax:++48 71 3280670
I have excellent results using a product called PICs that used to (and still may be) offered by SSTechnologies. It was a programmable simulation package that connected to the PLC's remote I/O port. I programmed in simulations of motors, pumps, flows, valves, etc. and tested my PLC programming. Then I used the completed PLC and simulation to test out the HMI. We were able to train operators in our office using the actual control software and HMI system, but in an off-line environment that was much less intimidating than training on a live system.
One drawback of this system is that you will embed your own assumptions in the simulation. For example, if the motor control circuit or equipment with a manufacturer's control panel operates differently in the field, you will still end up troubleshooting and modfying your PLC software. The test/training concept does, however, drastically reduce the on-site commissioning time.
To simulate the process, you can use simac, in this software you would not have to write code to simulate the processes, you just have to decribe the process.
Mathlab from mathworks is the first example of an excellent tool for simulating a control system. Don't forget to get it with simulink. It even has a code generation moduce that can make code and ability to interface to hardware via C programming.
Otherwise Labview from national instrument is alright too, as you can also use it to implement the system.