Labview and Beckhoff Twincat3 communication

[Paul_Torek]

Hi Christian,

I just installed Beckhoff TF3710 (64 bit, ver 1.4.0.0) and ... nothing.  Rebooted, still nothing - no Beckhoff group of VIs in user libraries.  Browsing around the obvious folders (user.lib, vi.lib, instr.lib) shows nothing.  What gives?

Correction:  nothing in Labview 2017x64.  But Beckhoff VIs are in LV2020x64 (my latest).  Strange.  And, on closing them, they list unsaved changes - originally saved in LV2017.  OK, so just tedious, not a real obstacle to me.

[Paul_Torek]

On third look, there is a major problem:  the required DLLs are missing.  (And this supposedly 64-bit code is looking for them in C:/Program Files (x86)/... .)

[dangeross]

Is anyone out there using TwinCAT TF3710 with 32bit LabVIEW ?

[Paul_Torek]

With help from Beckhoff, I found a way around the difficulties using TF3710 with various versions of Labview.  I think what we did is download the TF3710 for the latest version of Labview that Beckhoff provides for, for whichever bitness of Labview you plan to use.  Then back-save it for the version (e.g., 2017-32) of Labview you actually want.  It's been a while, so my memory is fuzzy on this, sorry.

[dangeross]

   After uninstalling LabVIEW 2024 and everything else NI Package Manager found and then stopping all of the NI process and services I could see in the Task Manager and deleting all of the folders left behind after uninstalling. I next rebooted and then uninstalled TwinCAT TF3710 followed by another reboot (I also put the TwinCAT runtime in to config mode for all of this). Next I used NI Package Manager to install LabVIEW 2023 Q1 32-bit after which I rebooted again and then reinstalled TF3710 followed by another reboot. It now looks like things may work now, I have not tested anything yet but I was able to open all of the examples and update them to 2023 where needed and the Beckhoff vi's show up in the user libraries now.

It may have been more monkey motion than needed but I would rather hammer it once hard than try to fix things in stages.

   Have you done much with TF3710 and if so is there anything one should look out for that may not be in the documentation.

[Paul_Torek]

Once you've gotten that far, my experience is that everything just works.  I encourage you to create a VI consisting of just the Symbol Interface.vi (from TF3710) and a Write To XML File(string).vi, with the PortInfo going from the one to the other.  Run this to create an XML file that you can just read from in your main code.  The main code can use Read From XML File(string).vi and the Init.vi from TF3710.

[dangeross]

Thanks Paul I tried to post the VIs but it is complaining about passwords so here are a couple of images to help newbies like me.

[Paul_Torek]

Sorry I missed your reply for so long!  Yes, those diagrams are just what I meant.  Is that not working for you?