Beckhoff tags reimport

Connectivity
1

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obraz_2026-01-13_113716086

I used Beckhoff Twincat project as my tag server for some conveyor system.

It got connected, works fine but once I add some instances, variables in Twincat project the connection to variables used in bindings is not working anymore.

Then I have to

  1. click “Import Tags” again but bindings marked by green tag graphic are gone(gray - not used)

  2. assign all the bindings again for all motors and sensors

It’s not possible to work on real large scale project with hundreds of conveyors if every time you updated the PLC project you have to redo all the bindings in Prototwin.

If at least there was same csv import option to import (reinitialize) tags-bindings instead of manual reworking …

Anyway Prototwin seems to have big potential to become great tool for virtual commissioning.

Hopefully there gonna be more options for import/export configurations that system can be preconfigured outside Prototwin based on data from PLC, project spreadsheets etc.

2

Hi Mirek,

Thanks for reporting this issue. You should not need to rebind the tags when re-importing. ProtoTwin Connect should retain the old bindings, provided that the old tags still exist. So this sounds like a bug.

Can you please clarify the steps required to reproduce the issue? Is this correct?

  1. Create some tags in TwinCAT
  2. Import the tags into ProtoTwin and bind them to some signals in the model.
  3. Add some additional tags in TwinCAT
  4. Re-import the tags into ProtoTwin.
  5. The old bindings are now broken?

Also, when you say that the bindings don’t work, do you mean that the bindings were deleted, or that they are no longer functional (i.e. they exist in the table but don’t work)?

3

Take a look at this screen recording:

Steps you listed are correct.

After extending PLC project in Twincat, first bindings are not functional and when I reimport tags they are lost.

The video should be enough to see what’s happening.

errors that are visible in left bottom corner starting at 1:38s are like:

image
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If you want any more details or tests I’m happy to help…

4

Thanks for providing the detailed information. I believe we have discovered the cause of the issue. It looks like it only affects the ADS protocol. I’m hoping to get a build released within the next few days to fix this issue. I’ll update this thread once it’s released. If you need a workaround before then, you could try using either OPC UA or Modbus. However, both require some setup in your TwinCAT project.

To remove bindings or tags, you should just be able to select them and hit the delete key on your keyboard. You’ll need to reset the simulation first. If that doesn’t work, it’s because the errors caused something to go wrong (and the next version should fix this).

5

I believe that the issue is caused by the addresses of existing tags changing when you add/remove other tags. However, no matter what I tried, I wasn’t able to get the addresses (ADS index offsets) to change. Nevertheless, the next version will try to resolve the addresses from the symbol names.

We have uploaded a prerelease of the next version, which I’m hoping fixes this issue. Can you please try downloading the Connect V2.2.0 installer. Let me know whether this fixes the issue.

Note that in Connect V2.2.0, you can now also import tags that are not mapped to physical IO by enabling the “Data Area” option in the tag server’s configuration. This allows you to bind to tags such as:

MyBool : BOOL; // AT %I* not required

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6

Great job, it works now :slight_smile:

After adding new tags in TwinCAT

  1. reset the simulation
  2. Import Tags
  3. Play the simulation or add new tags to bindings first

Thanks for the quick fix.

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