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Introduction to the format we highly recommend you use with your GRAFCET (FlowChart)

 

GRAFCET (FlowChart) and Ladder are two programming languages used in industrial automation, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. Here are some of the advantages of GRAFCET over Ladder:

  1. Readability and understanding: GRAFCET is a graphical language that represents the progression of a process in steps and transitions. This visual representation makes it easier to understand and follow the process, even for people who are not familiar with the language.
  2. Modularity: GRAFCET allows you to divide a complex process into sub-processes or macro-steps, which makes it easier to manage and maintain the program.
  3. Sequence management: GRAFCET is particularly well-suited for managing sequences, i.e. processes that follow a specific order. It makes it easy to represent the steps and transition conditions of a sequential process.
  4. Concurrent and parallel situation management: GRAFCET allows you to easily manage situations where multiple processes are running in parallel or where multiple conditions can be true simultaneously.
  5. Simulation and validation: The graphical representation of GRAFCET makes it easier to simulate and validate a program, as you can visually follow the progression of the process.
  6. Quicker than Ladder: Cycle times for medium sized programs in a well written Flow Chart application are typically less than 1ms.

 

The Grafcet/FlowChart language is ideal for a process that includes sequential steps.
The steps will be performed in a simple order that can change as a result of simple decisions.

 

Summary of how to use Grafcet/FlowChart

 

Subroutines: pass-by-reference variables

When you have several subroutines – and some executed more than once per logic pass – that had lot of parameters that were passed in every call, it’s better to write linked subroutines with pass-by-reference variables.

This dramatically reduced the parameters passed on each function call and generally dropped the cycle time to 1-2mS (they generally were very big programs).