Even “tmrDelay” or “tmr_delay” would be better. Care should also be taken with formatting. These tag names aren’t useless, per se, but without context they don’t mean much.

“fireRobotMove”, Which robot? Which move? Do I need a fire extinguisher? “AB_XGI:I.Data”, Obviously this is a data structure for some connected device but referencing it like this in your main routine is throwing away an opportunity for self-explanatory code. What’s this delay for? Are we using this to flash a light or wait a safe amount of time before lowering a heavy press? “tmrdelay” – “Timer” and “delay” are redundant. What? The client wants 50 coils to now be 100? If you did it right you should literally just have to change a tag, “Coil_Count” or whatever, from 50 to 100.ĭON’T – Use indecipherable tag names with no labeling Logic change? You don’t have to paste 50 fixes, just one small change to your subroutine and you’re done. AOIs, subroutines, and even basic arrays can speed up development time, keep code cleaner, and make future maintenance easier. But what happens when you’ve got 50 coils? Before you go hammering on Ctrl+V…ĭO – Look for opportunities to reuse code

We all have code like this because usually that’s all it is, just a couple rungs. Aside from changing the tag name from “CoilOne” to “CoilTwo” the rungs are identical. A rung to turn on the first one, maybe a delay timer, and then a rung to turn the next one on. Let’s say you’ve got two coils you want to activate in sequence. Here are some simple tips on how to not be that guy (or gal). If we’re not mindful, we may very well become the reason someone is shouting expletives at their screen. It’s easy to forget about the poor sap that has to maintain this in the future. But programmers have a tendency to write code for themselves, for the now, the immediate solution. The average PLC programmer is a smart person, don’t get me wrong. My apologies if that hits a little too close to home for some. “What in the world was this moron thinking?” An hour later you’re staring at a new (to you) program, thousands of rungs of ladder logic in front of you, no tag descriptions, unclear naming conventions, code that’s been copy and pasted a hundred times, and the best part is it’s all in one, massive routine. Ever the devoted servant you put down your beer and fire up a VPN while looking at last minute flights. Your client is losing $100k an hour and they’ve called you, probably just as you were sitting down for supper, to fix it as quickly as possible.

Tof plc ladder