SoftLogix Support?

Ignition
1

Hello all,

I am researching Ignition as a potential solution. I have searched here and elsewhere trying to find this answer. I have found some answers but nothing definitive. So I figured I’d ask here. I have 26 Soft Logix 5860s from rev 15 to 20. I have downloaded a trial gateway 7.9.10 and 8.0 and I am trying to connect to them using the Control Logix driver. With no such luck yet. The automation PC’s in these machines have two NIC cards. One for the machine bus that uses a standard IP schema and one that is on our business network. I have mounted an ENT card on the virtual rack using the same and a different IP as the address for the business network and tried to connect this way. Usually getting EIP errors and whatnot. Could be firewalls or something I am still investigating. So I was wondering how and if some of y’all are connecting to Soft Logix. I have seen a posting somewhere stating they aren’t supported. Thanks!

2

Huh. I’ll have to add this to my lab setup.

3

It’s worth trying the v21+ Logix Driver even though they are older firmware versions.

Might work, just with worse performance.

4

You are almost certainly going to have to connect via the machine-side IP address.

5

I was afraid someone would say this.

6

I used Softlogix all the time for development purposes. v20 using the older ControlLogix driver, set it up just like you would a real PLC and it should just work. If you suspect it’s a firewall issue then you’ll need to open up the same ports you would for RSLinx comms, 44818?? I would have to look them up.

Sadly, I can’t use Softlogix for development anymore because they don’t support newer firmware versions so it’s RSEmulate and OPC-Comm module now. #sigh

7

Do you need the SoftLogix / RSEmulator to run code, or are you just wanting to have a working target for Ignition’s OPC connection? If the latter, you can import your Logix program (in L5X format) into my Ethernet/IP driver in another Ignition VM. Point your dev copy of Ignition at the VM using the standard Logix v21 driver and it’ll think there’s a PLC there, even down to browsing your OPC tags.

8

Sounds handy, but I typically develop both PLC and Ignition applications.

9

Yeah, AB lost a lot of business over that. We had to switch to Bosh Rexroth Controllers for our machines with embedded CNC. Now that they support external DLL routines.