TC3 XCAD Interface is the latest interface between ECAD tools and TwinCAT 3.

In this 30-minute webinar, Béla Höfig explains among other things how I/O topologies created in ECAD tools with the aid of the standardized format AutomationML (AML) can be imported into TwinCAT and automatically created, which saves effort for manual transfers.

It will be shown that, on the basis of the AML format, it is possible to exchange data incrementally and bidirectionally. This means that an import into TwinCAT can be done at a very early stage of the electrical design and can be simply updated at any time.

If changes to the I/O topology should become necessary, for example during the commissioning, they can be transferred back to the ECAD tool via AML. Change management is thus considerably simplified.

With the help of the XCAD plugins, a PLC project with a global variable list can be created when importing the AML file (based on the tag table that it contains), whose variables are already connected with the I/O channels. Complicated manual linking is thus unnecessary.