Get familiar with Simumatik
Start by loading the system called Tutorial: Building a basic electric system. The system includes a power supply, three buttons, three lights and a box for mounting the components.
Basic electric component
Select one of the components, for example, the green button called ‘S01’ inside the ‘station’ assembly.
You can now see the component’s public variables and their values in the right panel along with the component’s ports at the bottom of the right panel.
If you click on the three dots (…) next to a component and then Info, a pop-up window with information about the component will appear.
If you press the Symbol button in the port panel, the 2D symbol of the component will appear with a dot representing each port. If you place your mouse over a port, the name of that port will be displayed.
Now that you know how to view the symbol of a component, take a quick look at the symbols of the other components in the system as well.
Building a basic circuit
The first basic circuit you are going to build is the one represented in the diagram below. The power supply ‘PS01’ will be directly connected to the red light ‘H01’. ‘PS01’ has two electric output ports called ‘dc_p’ and ‘dc_n’, they will be connected directly to the ‘H01’ input ports, ‘x1’ and ‘x2’ respectively.
Component movement
Select the ‘Move’ mode in the toolbar and use the movement axes to bring the electric box (‘BOX’) to the centre of the table and place the ‘H01’ light on top of it like in the screenshot below. You may need to adjust the vertical position of ‘H01’ to place it properly on the box.
Port connections
Component’s ports can be connected following the same principles as in the electric diagram above. There are different types of ports, such as electric, pneumatic, mechanical, etc. Only ports of the same type can be connected. Furthermore, an output port can be connected to several input ports, but not the other way around. Input and output ports can be distinguished by their symbols.
Port connections are set by assigning input ports to output ports. This is done by telling each input port which output port sets the value on it. This is why several input ports can be connected to the same output port but not the other way around.
To assign the connections on the input ports of the light, select the ‘H01’ component and click on the port selection tool to the right of the ‘x1’ port. The port selection tool will display all compatible ports in the system, and because connections can be made between components in different assemblies, first you need to select the ‘station’ assembly, where all our components are grouped. Then look for the ‘PS01’ component, the power supply, and finally, you will see both output ports on it, ‘dc_p’, and ‘dc_n’. Now you can connect ‘x1’ input to ‘station > PS01 > dc_p’.
Once the selection is done, the connection address will be shown in the selection box. Do the corresponding connections between ‘x2’ and ‘dc_n’ ports follow the previous electrical diagram? Once complete, you should have the same port configuration as below in the ‘H01’ component.
Connections made to an output port can be inspected. If you select the ‘PS01’ component now, each output port will show how many connections have been made with it. Furthermore, if you click on the port selection tool, you can see its connection and even remove it by clicking on the remove (x) icon. By selecting the ‘dc_p’ port you will see that it is connected to the input port ‘x1’ of the ‘H01’ component inside the same assembly, as expected.
Start emulation
The basic circuit is now ready to be tested. We expect that the lamp will switch on immediately after the emulation has started.
To start the emulation, click on the ‘Start’ button in the toolbar. The clock will start counting the emulation time and the interaction mode will be enabled. You can pause and restart the emulation at any time.
If the connections were made correctly, the lamp will change color to bright red as soon as the emulation starts.
You can even inspect the ‘PS01’ and ‘H01’ port values to see that the values are transferred between them. To do that, you just need to click on the inspection view on the right of each port.
Now we are going to add the ‘S01’ push-button to the circuit, between the ‘PS01’ and ‘H01’ components so we can manually switch on the light when we press the push-button.
First, grab the green button component (S01) and place it on the box, close to the light.
Next, click on the button (S01) and connect the ‘dc_p’ output port of the power-supply (PS01) to the ‘x1’ input port.
Finally, click on the lamp (H01) and connect the ‘x2’ output port of the button (S01) to the ‘x1’ input port.
If you start the emulation again, the light won’t switch on until you activate the button component by clicking on it in the scene (using the left mouse button). When you release the button the light will switch off as expected.
