MP STUDIO 2 Phase 8 · Simulation

한국어 | English

Simulation runs the ladder on a virtual device on your PC, without real hardware. You can turn inputs on and off yourself and watch the outputs, timers and counters, which makes it a good way to check a program before downloading it to the device.

① The simulation bar, ② a purple dashed frame and ③ the current values in the Inspector are shown. The device pill shows Monitoring · SIM.

1. Click Simulate in the top band or select Run → Simulation.
2. The simulation bar appears above the canvas, and a purple dashed frame is shown around the canvas.
3. To stop, click Stop simulation at the right end of the bar, or click Simulate again.

Simulation and device monitoring cannot run at the same time. Turning on simulation while monitoring turns monitoring off.

• ① State: shows Running, Paused or Halted, and the reason it stopped.
• ② Pause and Resume: pauses or resumes scanning.
• ③ Step one scan: runs a single scan while paused.
• ④ Restart from scan 0: clears the memory and starts again from the beginning.
• ⑤ SCAN: the number of scans run, the virtual elapsed time and the scans per second.
• ⑥ Inputs: input point chips. Click a chip to turn that input on or off. Inputs not used in the ladder are dimmed.
• ⑦ Stop simulation

If the program has such cells, a virtual sensor cell(s) button and a cell(s) not simulated button, each with the number of cells, appear at the right end of the bar. Click one to go to those cells in turn.

• Click an input chip on the bar.
• Or click a P input contact cell in the ladder, or put the cursor on it and press Space.

In Figure 3, ① the P0 chip was turned on, so ② the P0 contact carries power, and output P32 turned on, so ③ the P32 self-holding contact has also changed to the power-flow color. Output coils and wires are shown in the same power-flow color as in monitoring, and the Current value in the Inspector shows the value. Input chips that are forced also show a force mark.

Function cells that read signals from outside the device, such as ADC and NTEMP, work as virtual sensors and are shown with a dotted pattern. Click the virtual sensor cell(s) button on the bar to go to those cells in turn. Click a virtual sensor cell, or put the cursor on it in the canvas and press Enter, to open the Write Value to Memory window for the OUT address of that function. The value you enter is reflected in the ladder from the next scan.

The value write window works as described in Phase 7 · Write Value to Memory.

The simulator calculates the behavior of the device on your PC. Check the following on the real device:

• The actual responses of serial communication (Modbus, CNET, IBUS and so on) and external devices (I2C, LCD, RTC and so on)
• The actual I/O wiring and scan time
• Cells the simulator cannot run (shown with diagonal hatching). Those rows are skipped and the rest is run.

If JMP repeats endlessly and a scan never finishes, the simulation halts and the reason is shown.

• Phase 7 · Monitoring and the Data Table
• Phase 4 · Functions

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