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The independent association PLCopen, together with its members and external
safety related organizations, defined safety related aspects within the IEC
61131-3 development environments. With this, the safety aspects can be supported
by a dedicated software tool, which is integrated into the software development
tools. As such it combines the logic and motion application development with
the related safety aspects. This combination helps developers to integrate
safety related functionality into their systems, even from the beginning of
the development cycle. Also, it contributes to the understanding of safety
aspects, as well as reducing the certification time and costs by relevant organizations.
In 2006 the safety specification Part 1 - Concepts and Function Blocks - was
released. With this part 1 the safety aspects can be transferred to a software
tool, which is integrated in the software development.
Since part 1 is more focused to the implementers of the functionalities,
PLCopen realized it needed to do more to help OEMs to add the safety
functionality to their machines' application software. For this reason the Part
2 - User Guidelines - was developed.
Part 2 is focused to the users of the PLCopen functionalities and
demonstrates the ease of use of the defined function blocks in real life
applications.
Since the release of Part 1 and 2 it became obvious that additional
functionalities are needed.
Part 3 - Extensions to the Function Blocks -
is partly dealing with these additions. These new function blocks extend
the scope of the specification and harmonize the diagnostics interface
for easier handling by the user.
Part 3 is now released for comments until June 22, 2012 as version 0.99
and can be downloaded here.
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