One of the many useful troubleshooting utilities available in TIA Portal is the ability to perform comparisons between two projects, in order to identify differences in implementation or functionality. While an offline/online comparison allows the user to identify changes in program code by connecting to a PLC to compare that PLC’s project (the “online” project) with a separate project open in TIA Portal (the “offline” project), an offline/offline comparison allows the user to compare the contents of two TIA Portal projects to each other, without the need to connect to a PLC. Not only can the user compare the program code of the two offline projects, they can also compare the hardware of the two projects to determine if different modules, configurations, etc. have been used.
Below are the steps on how to perform an offline/offline comparison in TIA Portal.
- Open TIA Portal and browse for the first offline project you want to compare. This will open in the Project Tree.
- Enable “Reference Projects” under the View Menu.
- In the Reference Projects section, click “Open reference project” (folder icon with green arrow) open the second offline project that you want to compare. The contents of this offline project (program blocks, PLC tags, etc.) will be highlighted in grey, indicating “read only”.
- Right click on a specific object in the first offline project, select “Quick Compare”, and select an object in the read-only second offline project to compare to.
Alternatively, you can compare all of the contents of two offline projects side by side using the Compare editor offline. This can be accessed by right clicking the PLC in the first offline project, selecting ” Compare” and “Offline/offline”. Once the editor is open, drag the second offline project’s PLC from the Reference projects view to the righthand “Insert here” section of the editor. Switch between the “Software” and “Hardware” tabs as needed.
Additional Contributions
- Julyann Tu – AWC, Inc.
