PLC Software saving to AutoCad 2

[Adrian2]

Dear Folks;

Are the any commercial PLC packages that can save the ladder logic diagrams they create to .dwg format ?

I was just checking out Rockwell Automations RSLogix programming environment and did not see any means to do this.

Not sure if you have to pay for extra software to make this kind of thing possible

Many Thanks!

Adrian Dunevein
AAA Drafting Services

http://www.aaadrafting.com

 

[Paulusgnome]

Here is how I would do this :
1) Use a pdf print utility such as Cutepdf to print the diagrams in .pdf format, and
2) Use a conversion utility such as Img2Cad to convert the .pdf's to .dxf's.

Both utilities are available as free downloads, just google them.

 

[jraef]

But why is this necessary? The only reason to put anything into AutoCAD format would be to make changes easier, but a PLC program cannot be changed by changing the drawing. Why not just embed the diagram as an image if it's just for documentation?

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[MiketheEngineer]

Why just not do it in AutoCad. Build the blocks you want and drag and drop as needed??

 

[controlsdude]

Reminds me when I worked for this controls house, they were required to provide a customer with AutoCad drawings of the PLC programs. This was back in the 90s, must of made like 1000's of these drawings, I had like a bunch of cad operators helping me with this effort. Thought it was a waste of time but it paid the bills.

Format was Booleen AND, OR, Function block representations of ladder logic.

We had special lisp routines to automatically draw the above, but still was a time consuming effort, and it was not an automatic function.

I thought there was a PLC to autocad package back in the 90s but it was pricey. Beiieve it was out of canada. Taylor was the name of the product back then, no telling what it is now. Googled it and still exists.


But the technical name was logic gate representation, I believe it was similar to the digital system classes that every electrical engineer took in the 1st or 2nd year.

 

[jraef]

I belive Taylor became AutoDesk, the makers of AutoCAD.


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