Drivers

To communicate with a data source (PLC field bus, etc.) it is necessary to connect to a driver. Depending on the needs of the project, the necessary drivers (depending on the PLC) and their process variables have to be created.

Open the node Variables in the project manager.
Activate the context menu of the entry Drivers with the right mouse button.
Select the menu entry Driver new.

The driver selection dialog opens now.

Scroll down in the list of Available drivers until you reach the folder Siemens.
Choose the driver S7 TCP-IP. The entry is put in the field Driver name as shown in the dialog box Definition of driver. Close the dialog by confirming the selection with OK.

Now the dialog for the configuration of the driver opens.

Set the Mode to Simulation (counting).

In the mode Hardware, zenon would immediately try to connect to the PLC when the Runtime is started. As we do not have a PLC at the moment, zenon would show errors for all values if we chose the Hardware mode.

Switch off Update time global.

By setting this, we can assign one of four different update times to every single variable during the definition of variables. These four update times can be set in the lower part of this dialog, under Priority

All other tabs of this dialog are driver-specific, i.e. different according to the chosen driver. As we do not have a PLC at the moment, we do not have to regard these settings in this example.