Siemens ST PCS 7 User Manual

Siemens ST PCS 7 · November 2007

7

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The Route Control (RC) configuration supplements the basic 

SIMATIC PCS 7 plant configuration with blocks from the PCS 7 

standard library. Existing plants are then also easy to upgrade 

with SIMATIC Route Control. Technological elements of rele-

vance for control of the material transport (RC elements) are 

adapted in the CFC Editor using uniform interface blocks from 

the Route Control Library. The RC elements include:
• Control elements (actuators)
• Sensor elements (sensors)
• Parameter elements (setpoints)
• Connection elements (material information related to partial 

route)

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Locations of partial or complete routes are configured in the-

SIMATIC Manager as "Equipment properties of plant units" and 

transferred to the RC project together with the other RC-relevant 

basic data of the SIMATIC PCS 7 project. The configuration re-

quirements caused by many repeated sequences can be mini-

mized by exporting locations in CSV format, duplicating and 

modifying them using a spreadsheet program, and then import-

ing them again. 
Locations (synonym: nodes) are parameters for requesting a 

material transport (source, destination, intermediate loca-

tions/via) and which mark the start and end of each partial route, 

and thus also the source and destination of a material transport. 
In addition to the basic tools (SIMATIC Manager, CFC, etc.) of 

the SIMATIC PCS 7 engineering system, the following configura-

tion components of the SIMATIC Route Control Engineering pro-

gram package are available for configuration of the route control 

applications:

The Route Control library contains blocks for RC and transport 

route configuration and interface blocks for RC elements. It is 

provided in the catalog of the CFC editor.

The Route Control wizard is the interface between the SIMATIC 

PCS 7 basic configuration supplemented with RC interface 

blocks and the actual RC configuration in the RC engineering 

tool. The wizard, which can be called up from the SIMATIC Man-

ager menu, accepts the RC-specific configuration data of the 

SIMATIC PCS 7 project into the Route Control engineering. In 

doing so, it carries out plausibility checks, defines the AS-OS 

and AS-AS communication connections (NetPro and CFC), and 

configures the RC server signals.

Following importing of the basic data of a SIMATIC PCS 7 project 

relevant to the RC into an RC project, the RC-specific objects are 

configured using the Route Control Engineering tool:
• Partial routes:

division of the transport paths into partial routes is used to in-

crease the flexibility and minimize the configuring overhead 

by means of repeated application. Relevant partial route pa-

rameters: "bidirectional" and "priority" (lowest total of partial 

route priorities is decisive when searching for the overall 

route).

• Interconnections: 

Through inclusion in a partial route, the RC elements receive 

additional properties depending on the type, and these can 

be edited using configuration dialogs (e.g. in the basic set-

ting: "close valve"). 

• Function catalogs: 

The partial routes can be assigned to function catalogs de-

pending on technological and product-specific aspects, e.g. 

"cleaning" or "product transport". In the route search, function 

catalogs permit restriction of the resulting quantity to the type 

of material transport.

• Function steps/sequence functions: 

Function catalogs contain as many as 32 configurable techno-

logical sequence functions which define the sequence of ma-

terial transport by means of the RC elements connected in the 

partial routes, e.g. base position of the control elements, open 

transport valves, open origin valve, switch on pump). 

© Siemens AG 2007