Assignment lists

An assignment list contains the addresses, the symbolic addresses, and the function text of a PLC. They are available in different formats, according to the manufacturer.

In the Addresses / assignment lists dialog (menu item Project data > PLC > Addresses / assignment lists), all inputs and outputs for the PLC controllers in the project are managed. The device tags of the associated PLC cards for all addresses already used in the project are displayed, to distinguish them from those not yet used. The PLC addresses (channels) can be edited here, independently of their installation in cards.

Data can be exchanged with an Excel table using Copy & Paste.

For every address, the CPU that it belongs to is specified. Several PLC controllers in a project are distinguished from each other by the CPU, to be more precise the complete CPU name. The affiliation of a PLC card to a CPU is specified via the CPU name.

Assignment lists can be imported or exported in the Siemens formats *.SDF and *.SEQ, or as ASCII files *.ASC. On importing the assignment list, you enter CPU information to define whether the addresses of an existing CPU are to be synchronized or whether the addresses of a new CPU are to be assigned. The addresses not used can be re-used. If a free address is manually entered and if it is initially present as a duplicate, then it is not automatically re-used.

Note:

If you must subsequently import or export assignment lists of different PLC controllers, then you must select the respective correct PLC-specific settings because the formats for PLC addresses can be different for each PLC type. Otherwise, wrongly formatted addresses may be generated by the program when importing or exporting. To this purpose you can select a scheme for the PLC-specific settings at each PLC box that represents a CPU.

Synchronize assignment lists

In the Addresses / assignment lists dialog, you can (manually) create an assignment list. If you wish to synchronize with an external assignment list (that was not created with EPLAN), first export the EPLAN assignment list. Then import the external assignment list, followed by the EPLAN assignment list. If you have entered the same CPU for both lists, the entries in both lists are synchronized.

Notes:

During an export from EPLAN the line breaks in the function texts are removed at the majority of formats, since line breaks are not foreseen in the corresponding PLC configuration programs. During importing you can decide whether the line breaks existing in the project are to be kept or not.

Multi-part function text in the assignment list

In the Allen Bradley software PLC5, a five-part function text is possible; this is written into five fields in the assignment list.

In order to manage multi-part function texts, the "Function text" format element can be repeatedly inserted in the format of the assignment list row. This means that you require five "Function text" format elements for a five-row function text. In the "Function text" property, you split the function text at the function using line breaks.

If, in the "Function text" property, fewer portions are available than fields in the assignment list, the remaining fields remain empty or are filled with spaces during export of the assignment list. This depends on whether the format element for the function text has a variable or fixed length.
If more portions are available than fields in the assignment list, then the extra parts are combined in the last field and the line breaks are replaced with spaces.
If a portion of the function text is too long for a field, then this is split on export and the remainder is written to the next field. On import, this leads to an extra line break.

On import, the portions from the individual fields are combined and line breaks are inserted.

Export and import of multilingual function texts in the assignment list

In EPLAN it is possible to take multilingual function texts into account when exporting and importing assignment lists. The function texts can be exported and imported in all the displayed languages that have been selected in the translation settings.

Warning:

The selected displayed languages and their sequence have to agree exactly during exporting and importing. Otherwise you could have mixed language entries after the import, because no language identifier is exported in the assignment list and the language is therefore not recognized automatically during importing.
Ensure that the function texts are translated in all the selected displayed languages. If a translation text is empty in one of the selected languages, this is filled with the source text during exporting. This also happens when you export the assignment list in one language but export it into a different language than the source language.
Use the same scheme for the PLC-specific settings for the export and import.

Prerequisite for the export and import of multilingual function texts is that you have created and use a suitable scheme for the PLC-specific settings. A "Function text" format element in the format of the assignment list row has to exist for every language to be exported in the scheme that is used. The languages are exported in the sequence of the displayed languages that was specified in the translation settings. The number of the selected displayed languages must match the number of "Function text" format elements in the used scheme.

During importing the entries from the assignment list are written into the project in accordance with the sequence of the displayed languages.

Multi-part multilanguage function texts in the assignment list

Multi-part function texts, for example the five-part function texts of the Allen Bradley software PLC5, can also be exported and imported in multiple languages. Exporting is carried out row-by-row, meaning that every part of the function text is exported in the sequence of the displayed languages. In the used scheme for the PLC-specific settings a "Function text" format element has to exist per language for each part of the function text.

If, therefore, you wish to export a five-row function text in three languages, you require 15 "Function text" format elements in the scheme for the PLC-specific settings. During the export the first three fields are filled with the first partial text in the sequence of the displayed languages. Then the next three fields are filled with the second partial text, and so on, until the last three fields have been filled with the fifth partial text.

The rules for the handling of multi-part function texts, as described above in the section "Multi-part function texts in the assignment list" also apply in this case.

Example:

For simplicity's sake we will consider a three-row function text in this example. The source text is shown here schematically as T1_DE to T3_DE. In the project the function text is entered in the three languages German, English and French. The languages are selected in this sequence as displayed languages. The English translation text has only two partial texts. The French one, by contrast, four.

de_DE	en_US	fr_FR
T1_DE T2_DE T3_DE	T1_EN T2_EN	T1_FR T2_FR T3_FR T4_FR

Nine "Function text" format elements are entered in the format of the assignment list row. This means that nine columns are output for the function text in the export file. In the process each text part is output in the sequence of the displayed languages (meaning German, English, French in this case.) The language identifiers in the header are only for information and are not exported. Since the English translation text only has two partial texts, the last column remains empty. The last two partial texts (T3_FR and T4_FR) of the French translation text are combined in the last field and the line break is replaced by a blank.

de_DE	en_US	fr_FR	de_DE	en_US	fr_FR	de_DE	en_US	fr_FR
T1_DE	T1_EN	T1_FR	T2_DE	T2_EN	T2_FR	T3_DE		T3_FR T4_FR