I'm looking for software that can accurately pull every termination point from my schematics and include the cable ID's, preferably, also a section that includes "From Device" "To Device". Our drafter uses Draftsight 2026 but says that he doesn't have the plug ins available to do this. I'd like to theb populate this list into an excel sheet to use for point to point continuity tests.
Hello everyone, I am 17 and I just got enrolled in a university department that will allow me to become an Industrial Automation Engineer in the future (note that I live in Europe/Greece and not US). Originally I wanted Computer Engineering, and specifically going to the path with Embedded Systems, because I wanted to work both software wise and hardware wise. I didn't end up qualifying there so I opted in for the department above since it was the best alternative than taking a whole year off again for exams. But I am not sure if this job is for me. I know the enviroment is more tough, has a lot of travelling, and is not a 100% desk job but that is fine, infact I prefer that over sitting all day. I am more confused on what I will do on on a day to day basis, and also how different PLC is from standard programming languages. I know there are many ways to program PLC's and most look like a flowchart or circuit, which confuses me on how you can make a complicated machine with so many restrictions. I did ask AI for all the above, but AI hallucinates and I don't trust it with my future and felt to ask here too. I probably left a lot of gaps in this text so please ask me for more information. And I am sorry if this is common information, I did google before sending this post.
I’ve been looking at servo platforms lately and ethercat support almost feels like a checkbox now. The more interesting differences seem to show up after that. That’s part of why I’ve been looking more closely at platforms from Beckhoff, Yaskawa, Elmo Motion Control and others instead of just comparing protocol support. Elmo especially caught my attention around compact multi-axis systems, where synchronization and drive footprint can both become design constraints.
At this point I’d rather see vendors benchmark actual multi-axis behavior than advertise “EtherCAT supported.”
What has actually separated a good EtherCAT servo implementation from an average one in your experience?
I’m curious how people working with PLCs and industrial control systems are actually using tools like Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot, Cursor or similar coding agents today.
Do you use them at all?
If you do, what are they genuinely useful for? Structured Text, ladder logic, HMI or SCADA work, documentation, debugging, generating function blocks, interpreting manuals, test code, or something else?
If you do not use them, why not? Is it because the code is not good enough, they lack enough context about the machine, the existing tools are faster, security policies prevent it, or you simply would not trust generated code on real equipment?
I’m especially interested in where they start to fall short once you move beyond writing code and get onto the actual machine.
For example, are they useful for generating an initial program but much less useful when you get into live I/O, interlocks, commissioning, diagnosing hardware, understanding why a sequence is not behaving properly, or making changes on site?
Would you ever be comfortable giving an AI agent access to a PLC so it could read the live machine state, write or modify control logic, test the behaviour and see whether it actually worked?
If not, what would stop you?
And if something like that ever was useful, what would you need around the AI before you trusted it? Simulation, strict limits on what it could change, approval before downloads, automatic testing, physical feedback from the machine, something else?
I’m mainly trying to understand which parts of PLC programming and commissioning AI can already help with, and which parts still depend heavily on an experienced controls engineer being there with the machine.
Hey reddit, so I've been developing a software product for factories. Mostly mid sized factories, let's say with an annual revenue of 5-45 million dollars and a size of 18,000 sqft to 66,000 sqft. I have 0 experience in manufacturing/industry, however I'm very confident in this software, as it fixes a lot of blind spots I've found studying this sector of the economy. Anyway, this post isn't really about the product itself. It's already done, its utility cost cutting whatever. I priced it at $299/m which is cheaper than any other alternative i could find. I just really need help on figuring out how do I distribute this to factories? I'm looking to get about let's say 25 factories under my belt early on, within a couple of months. The software mostly has to do with electrical cost saving but has some other aspects too. Should I try to find a partner (I'm not too fond of that idea but if I NEED someone with deep experience I guess I'll do it.) Should i contact smaller suppliers across California to do this? How is software even distributed to factories? I guess what I'm really asking is how is software distributed in this field, and who should I work with to get my product out there?
Okay so I've decided I'm done working my job of 5 years and decided to enroll myself in my local School of Applied Technology for a 5 semester Industrial Automation and Robotics program which is starting on January 11th of 2027. I have absolutely no experience in this field but would like to say I'm pretty motivated and efficient at learning new things. I'm 23 years old so what are some of the things I should be focusing on right now to ensure myself good opportunities in the future. Again, I'm very new to this field so any advice would be much appreciated!
Hello there!
My intent in creating this thread is to get an opinion from people in the field about a business my partner and I are starting.
Put simply, we provide solutions for automation involving dynamic digital twins and custom control laws, but we are not a turnkey company. I would say we are, perhaps, more a data analysis and dev company for industrial automation.
In the dynamic digital twins part, we estimate the equation that describes a process given the input to the plant and output from sensors - ideally, we would not need to install new sensors. We understand that the benefits of this service include:
Also for the digital twin, we build the software that will attach to the monitoring system of the client and keep it updated. For this software, we are not sure if we should provide it as a SaaS or as a monthly fee-based software (local or not) - we planned this to be a recurrent source of income.
In the control law part, we bring the following benefits:
We also provide common services such as filtering, sensor calibration and control tuning.
Of course, we provide consulting services, e.g., support control architecture decisions.
And finally, we have the training service. We train people on control and automation concepts.
My doubts are regarding viability and to whom or which company I should offer. From my research, it seems that a good path is to offer our services as specialists for EPC companies and fly under their wings, instead of trying to reach factories directly, for example. Is there a better way to get our first clients? In the end, is our company viable? Will clients perceive value in our services?
The overall business plan is to start with projects and slowly migrate to recurrent services, like the digital twin update software. From the training services, we hope that we will have enough material to build courses that will be sold off the shelf.
We are both technical people; my partner is an electrical engineer and I am a computer scientist. We both have MSc and DSc in the area of Systems and Control. He studied a more classical approach, while I am from the mobile robotics world. Our main struggle is related to how to get clients and which channel to use. Should we use LinkedIn, cold emails, google or something else? I've done the company profile on LinkedIn and on Google Ads, but I don't know which to focus. We both have day jobs still, so we have very limited time.
I appreciate any comment, suggestion and consideration you guys leave.
When a robot or machine throws an error and production stops, what's the actual process your team follows to find the fix? Do they: → Search the manual? → Call a colleague? → Google the error code? → Call the vendor? → Something else entirely? And roughly how long does it usually take to find the answer?
r/manufacturing
r/PLC