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Chapter
5
Operating Instructions
Flexi Soft Gateways
108
© SICK AG • Industrial Safety Systems • Germany • All rights reserved
8012664/XB29/2013-06-11
Subject to change without notice
Ethernet gateways
5.5.6
Tag name export
The Flexi Soft Designer allows you to export the names of the bits used in the input and
output data sets. Before exporting you can also edit the start addresses for the used data
sets in the PLC. The exported tag names and start addresses can then be imported as
variables to the application program in the EtherCAT network configuration tool (e.g.
TwinCAT PLC). This speeds up the generation of the PLC program and makes it easier to
identify each bit in the EtherCAT PDOs.
How to export the tag names:
The input and output data sets must be exported separately. Depending on whether you
want to export the tag names of the input or output data sets, open the
CPU to
EtherCAT
or the
EtherCAT to CPU
configuration page.
Click on the
Export
button in the toolbar. A dialog window opens.
Select the destination folder, enter a name for the export file, select the required file
type (e.g. *.csv or *.exp for TwinCAT) from the selection list at the bottom of the dialog
window and click on
Save
to export the file.
For each used data set the export creates a 10 byte structure with the byte or module
names and a bit variable for each used bit.
The name of the bit variable consists of the application name, the name of the byte and
the name of the bit.
It is recommended to assign a tag name to each module in the Flexi Soft configuration
and to use unique tag names for all modules, bytes and bits. Special characters in the
names are deleted and spaces are replaced with the character “_”.
The start address for each data set in the TwinCAT PLC process image can be changed
in the gateway configuration menu (see below).
Notes