What is IEC 61131-3?
Thursday, 30 October 2008IEC 61131-3 is an international standard first published in December 1993 by the IEC. It is the third publication in the series IEC 61131. The current (second) edition was published in 2003. This standard defines two graphical and two textual PLC programming language standards: - Ladder logic (graphical) - Function block diagram (graphical) - Structured text (textual) - Instruction list (textual) The standard also defines both graphical and textual sequential function chart elements to organize programs for sequential and parallel control processing. Copyright©2006-2007 What-is.Net All rights reserved. Last Updated: June 16, 2007 What is IEC 61131-3? Basically it is a programming language standard that originates from the Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC's) but has been adopted very widely in the Industrial world. It is the only viable standard and therefore is at the core of an Open Solution to Control and Automation. Any standard needs a body to control it since all standards are continually developing. Also there has to be some form of independent conformance testing and the administration of this falls under the remit of the standardisation body. For IEC 61131-3, the body is PLC Open http://www.plcopen.org/ .
