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What are IEC 61131-3 and PLCopen?

FEBRUARY 23, 2018 BY MILES BUDIMIR — LEAVE A COMMENT

The IEC (the International Electrotechnical Commission) is an international standards

organization that publishes electrical and electronic standards. Hundreds of them, in fact;
standardizing everything from letter symbols in electronics to medical equipment and railroad
communication and signaling.

Speci cally, IEC 61131-3 is the standard for “Industrial-process measurement and control –
programmable controllers.” It sets standards for PLC programming languages and the
programming interface itself. It speci es the syntax and semantics of PLC programming
languages; speci cally, the graphical languages of Ladder Logic and Functional Block
Diagrams and textual languages of Instruction Lists and Structured Text, and Sequential
Function Charts as well.
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The IEC 61131-3 standard deals with the basic architecture of these ve PLC programming
languages.

The latest version (61131-3) was published in 2013. It includes technical changes related to data
and programming of PLC languages and speci es new data types as well as object-oriented
features of classes and function blocks.

As for PLCopen, this is an independent organization focused on industrial controls. It is vendor

and product independent and accepts memberships from PLC and automation
manufacturers. Its core activity is centered on making software development for PLCs more
e cient. Some of the ways it does so is by working to encourage reusability of code as well as
o ering libraries of control-speci c functions to PLC programmers, all of which is based on
standard, existing tools that are readily accessible. With the emphasis on PLC programming,
the group’s work is naturally centered on the IEC 61131-3 standard for programmable
controller design.

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