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Siemens TIA Portal V13 issues

24 Sep, 2014

Stephan

22 Comments

(Updated May 29, 2015.)

Totally Integrated Automation (TIA)
is the current Siemens engineering
framework for automation. It is vastly different from the 5.x version and it took me
time to get used to. Overall, it has been improving steadily with each new version but
there are still a few pesky issues that can be a bother. This is valid for version 13
service pack 1 update 3 (June 2015) but some of these issues have been present in
earlier versions.
(I will update this post regularly.)

First things first: back up often

With the classic Step 7 5.x you always had the option of saving each window
individually. Sometimes it can be useful not to save after a download, so that you can
quickly revert back to the last saved version.
The programming editor could crash, resulting in the possible loss of work for any
window in the editor that wasn't saved. Other components would survive the crash.
There is an important deviation in TIA Portal: a crash of the software brings down the
entire software suite, resulting in the loss of anything not saved, not just the current
window and/or the current editor, but everything (tags, alarms, HMI components,
hardware configurations, etc).
Therefore, it is sage advise to not only save but also back up often throughout the day.
You can't save the contents of selected windows or components, it is all or nothing.
Backing up an open project can be done from within TIA Portal without closing the
project. The resulting .zap13 file is a ZIP file with a custom Windows extension.
(I should point out that since V13 Update 3 the stability has vastly improved. With V13
SP1 UPD1 I experienced only one crash -- knock on wood.)

Undo missing for STL networks

In any ladder network you can use the undo function. In STL networks, however, any
accidental deletions of code or any typos are permanent: no undo implemented for
STL. Siemens engineers must never make mistakes.

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No undo for STL networks.

Recently, I accidentally selected a fair amount of code and before realizing this I had
pressed delete. I was able to restore the deleted code from one of the very frequent
backups I make throughout the day, but it is time consuming to open a second project,
find and copy the code. A simple undo would be so nice.

Edit: Even in ladder networks the undo function is not always available. It seems
inconsistent.
Update: this has improved considerably with V13 Update 5.

Major problem: incorrect marking of difference offline/online

Often, the software will indicate differences between online/offline versions. This
seems to be based on time stamps, rather than actual code differences. See: Comment
changes in STL networks forces recompile/download elsewhere. The classic Step 7
would display this with different symbols, red for code differences (based on
checksum) and yellow for time stamp mismatches (which can occur if you have made
comment changes after downloading a block).

In the above example FC125 and FC135 have the same checksum but different time
stamps, so TIA Portal indicates this as a problem. It more or less forces a download or
else it will be impossible to monitor the block.

Unable to insert new STL network from STL network

From within a ladder network you can add a new ladder network via the button on the
toolbar. Via a right-click inside the network you can insert either a new ladder network
or a new STL network.

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For STL networks there is no choice, you can only add a new ladder network, not a new
STL network. You have to insert a ladder network first, then add a new STL network
from there, then delete the ladder network. Seems like an oversight.

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Ghost ladder networks added

After adding a new ladder network after the last network another ladder network is
always added right after the first object is added to the new network. I constantly find
myself deleting these empty networks. Not sure what the rationale behind this could
be. Seems like a bug.
In this example, I added network 42 after the last network, 41:

As soon as I add an object to the network, a new ladder network, here 43, is added:

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Comment changes in STL networks forces recompile/download

You can modify network comments for both ladder and STL networks without issues.
However, any change in STL comments will require recompiling and downloading of the
block. Annoying at best.
Here is an example where the offline/online versions match:

A modification to the first STL comment causes the entire block comparison to fail:

Insufficient scroll wheel support

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The scroll wheel is supported. However, scrolling by hovering over a window without
highlighting it is not supported consistently. Some windows (like the assignment lists)
do not support scrolling with the scroll wheel at all. Really, Siemens?

No scrolling with Control-Up/Down

Any decent programming editor will support scrolling with the keyboard combinations
Control-Up and Control-Down. It scrolls the page up and down without moving the
location of the cursor. Version 5.x supported it, although not in all editors. SCL, for
example, didn't support it. Unfortunately, this is not implemented for TIA Portal at all.

Monitor after download

Once a block has been downloaded to the PLC it will take some time before TIA Portal
performs a checksum test and updates the status indicating the offline and online
version matches. Until then, the green "play" button remains greyed out. Sometimes,
these delays are more than annoying if speed is of the essence.

Fonts ignored when printing

When printing code the software ignored fonts defined for ladder and STL and uses
Courier New for STL code. It uses a fairly large font size for this that seems
disproportional to the font size for the ladder networks.
Current settings:
General -> Script/text editors -> Font:

General -> Script/text editors -> STL:

General -> PLC programming -> LAD/FDB -> Font:

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Given these settings, this is what the screen looks like from within TIA Portal:

When printing it is ignoring the font settings. The STL font is also disproportionally
large compared to the text in the ladder logic:

Numerical format while monitoring

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With Step 7 5.x you could right-click and select a different format. Unfortunately, with
TIA Portal the format cannot always be changed. When monitoring values in ladder
networks, the format can be changed via right-click / modify / display format:

When monitoring interface values for FB/FC calls the format is almost always
hexadecimal, making it difficult to interpret. The format cannot be changed:

A nice feature is that the columns with displayed values can be moved sideways.

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Tooltips obscuring view

More often than not the multitude of tooltips are obscuring the view of the code below
it.

It would be better to display information in the status bar. Or move the tooltips above
the cursor. Or just don't pop them up when it is unnecessary, especially when
monitoring online.

STL address bug

When assigning the RLO to an address, TIA Portal considers entering =db25.dbx34.7 a
syntax error (even though this is perfectly valid). Only with a space after the equal sign
it will accept the input: = db25.dbx34.7.

Label name
In the classic Step 7, label names were allowed to start with underscores. Not anymore:

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If you start typing a quote after the jump instruction a popup appears. From there it
allows you to select the jump label starting with an underscore:

However, it will still be regarded as invalid:

This is not necessarily a huge deal, but it seems more like a bug than intentional
behavior.

Display gaps global addresses

In the overview for the global addresses, only addresses in use are displayed. It would
be helpful if gaps were displayed, the way it was with Step 7 5.5 so it is clearer where
available addresses can be found.

In the picture, the gap between words MW366-MW498 is visually somewhat obvious,
but that is often not the case.

Unique HMI object names

When copying an object and pasting it in the same screen (picture) it is assigned a
unique name. This is not the case when pasting the object in another screen. The name

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remains the same.

This leads to compiler warnings and can have unexpected (potentially dangerous)
results in runtime.

Lack of absolute addresses in datablocks

With classic Step 7 data blocks have a declaration view and a data view. The
declaration view is used to populate the DB and create structures. The latter reveals the
absolute addressing and is used for online viewing.

Declaration view in classic Step 7.

This view shows the absolute addresses
and the offset within structures and arrays.

Data view in classic Step 7.

This reveals the absolute addresses for the
entire DB, including structures and arrays.

In TIA Portal, however, it is not possible to view the absolute addresses in (non
optimized) data blocks.

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TIA Portal does not show the absolute addresses

(and there is no column that can be selected either).

FC and FB symbolic references only

Symbolic addressing is pushed hard (a tad too aggressive in my opinion). Even FC and
FB numbers (or SFC/SFB) are hidden from view when selecting a function from a library.
For example, when selecting SFC51 RDSYSST from Step 7 classic it lists these by their
number. TIA Portal only lists these by symbolic name.

SFC51 selection from the Step 7 classic library.

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SFC51 selection from the TIA Portal library.

This is unfortunate since a lot of the literature is referring to these by their numbers.

Updates
November 13, 2014: With V13/Update 5 the undo functionality has greatly improved.
December 20, 2014: Service pack 1 improved the undo feature.
February 17, 2015: Added label name peculiarity.
February 17, 2015: Added online/offline checksum fail.
March 19, 2015: Added the address gap issue.
March 29, 2015: Added more pictures to illustrate the label name issue from February
17.
April 26, 2015: Added HMI object name issue.
May 29, 2015: Added the lack of absolute references in data blocks and of function
blocks.
Technology Step 7 Automation TIA Portal
Add new comment

Comments

clarkchange | 7 months ago

great thanks.

I really believe classical step7 is more comfortable.

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Stephan | 7 months ago

I've done large projects in both. TIA definitely has time-saving features, especially

tag selection, better drag/drop of objects in ladder, etc. Hardware config is easier.
But it definitely has its quirks.

Marcus | 3 months ago

I have TIA Portal V13SP1. Every time I try to make/change screen objects visibility
tag the whole TIA Portal crashes!

Stephan | 3 months ago

Sorry to hear about your crashes. I have been fortunate enough that V13 SP1 has

only crashed once for me (I have, however, opted to reinstall everything with V13

SP1 and not update the existing installation that had V11 and V12). Have you tried
searching the support forum ?
This topic

has a recommendation to recompile the PLC project, then the HMI. Or

alternatively, copy the various project components to a newly created project.

Here is a topic

that mentions crashes when deleting tags from the HMI picture.

If neither one is helpful, I would recommend contacting Siemens for support on

this issue. In the past, they have often recommended re-installing the software,

very time-consuming. With TIA it often seems that project corruption can occur.
Evidently, the software is then not able to handle that gracefully.

Marko | 2 months ago

Thank you for gathering issues altogether. I have to comment to underscored jump
labels, they are possible to use but you have to mark the label name with " ", e.g
"_RUN" and then it will define it correctly to STL.

Stephan | 2 months ago

Hmmm... I can't get that to work for me. I can define a jump label starting with an
underscore. But I can't seem to let TIA accept a jump statement with that in any
way.

If I type the label name after the jump instruction it is regarded invalid.
If I start typing a quote as the first character after the jump instruction it will allow
the label name (with the underscore) to be selected from a list; it will reject the
result, though.

If I enclose the label name in quotes it is also rejected.

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Ronald | 2 months ago

Anyone tried to connect via an eWon modem with the TIA portal?

It's a nightmare. We just installed a remote PC with the software and control it with
teamviewer.

Many crashes and small bugs makes the TIA portal a true pain in the ass.

Stephan | 2 months ago

When it came to installing service pack 1 for v13 I reinstalled everything from

scratch. I suspected that previous versions (I still had v11 and v12 as well but had
no need for it) could contribute to stability issues. I have "only" seen one crash
since.

Sorry, I don't have experience with eWon.

Thomson | 2 months ago

Came in this morning and all blocks except two showed they were different. The
two were that last I worked on yesterday. Not a problem, as I am bench testing,
and a recompile and download solved it. However, what about on a live plant,

where it could be weeks, months even years between accessing the online code.

Operations don't like you stopping stuff. If I didn't have a new HMI requiring the
TIA Portal, I would not use it.

Stephan | 2 months ago

10

Me neither. I believe here is a problem with the code that performs the

comparison. Sometimes the checksum is identical but the time stamps aren't. Very
annoying as it won't allow monitoring.

taseer ullah | 1 month ago

11

hi, i am using TIA Portal v13. i am having a problem regarding alarms . here is a

system where alarms exceed 1000 per day . in thus software max numbr of data
records is 50,000 in statistics. but this is not enough for my observation . can

anybody have an idea how to increase this number. because i ve to analyse the
system month wise.

Stephan | 1 month ago

12

In older versions of WinCC alarm windows were limited to 1,000 alarms (probably a

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fixed limit for performance reasons). However, via the reporting system or by
accessing the SQL tables any alarm could be accessed.

Not sure if this can be done with TIA Portal. Best to contact Siemens.

taseer ullah | 1 month ago

13

Dearstephen! in the statistics i can accesss upto 50,000 alarms . but its too less

for monthly observation.the alarm window still shows a list of 1000 in TIA portal. i
want the statistics numbr to be increased..

Stephan | 1 month ago

14

If this is a production environment, you really recommend contacting Siemens tech

support.

taseer ullah | 1 month ago

15

However, via the reporting system or by accessing the SQL tables any alarm could
be accessed..

..how the reporting system or SQL server to be accessed?

Stephan | 1 month ago

16

Obviously, my previous attempts to point you to the Siemens support system have
fallen on deaf ears. Please head to Industry Support Siemens . Create an account

and open a support issue with Siemens, they are the professionals and will be able
to answer your question.

(I am not a user of WinCC in its new form, I can't help you with this, sorry.)

Olgierd | 3 weeks ago

17

Another annoying thing is lack of "DATA VIEW" when non-optimized DB is open.

Offsets are shown in reference to the beginning of the structure in the DB rather
than beginning of the DB. Thus absolute address of the variable in the DB has to
be always carefully calculated.

The workaround is to open monitor table then drag & drop tag from the DB. In the
monitor table absolute address is shown in reference to the beginning of the DB.

Stephan | 3 weeks ago

Indeed, I miss viewing the absolute addresses as well. It seems to fit in with the
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notion of forcing engineers to use symbolic programming as much as possible.

Thanks for the tip on going online. I guess you could achieve the same from the
simulator if you're not connected.

Another thing that relates to the overwhelming preference of Siemens for symbolic
addressing is that when selecting SFBs and SFCs it mostly is referred to by
symbolic names as opposed to the absolute block numbers.
Thanks for the feedback. (I'll update the main post.)

Chris | 1 week ago

19

I would love to try TIA portal if it would run without crashing all the time. Tried

reinstalling and downlowding the latest verisons but no luck. Open a project and

try to add a processor and crash every time. Siemens has no clue but at least V5.5
runs great. On my third try of an install but this time I got rid of LabView off my

computer. My computer is a Dell M4800 with an i7 and 16GB memeory and 1.2TB
of SSD so the processing power is not the issue.

Stephan | 1 week ago

20

The Siemens forums contain quite a few posts of people that experience crashes.
Where possible I would try to install and run from a virtualized environment, as

"clean" as possible. This is not always possible, I often use a CP5512 for Profibus
and MPI, for example and I've never been able to get that to work.

If you can't run TIA Portal virtualized, perhaps you can install Labview that way?
This way you'd still have access to it.

SAAD | 2 days ago

21

how to open .ZAP13

file in TIa v13???

Stephan | 2 days ago

SAAD:
(1) Project -> retrieve.
(2) Or you could rename your .zap13 archive to .zip and handle it outside TIA.

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