Coming from TwinCAT

These guides are for engineers who already use Beckhoff TwinCAT 3 and want to use IronPLC alongside it.

IronPLC reads your TwinCAT solution as-is — the .sln, .tsproj, and .plcproj project files and the .TcPOU, .TcGVL, .TcDUT, and .TcIO source files that TwinCAT XAE created. Without changing your project or your workflow, you can:

• check your project for problems and get a second opinion on your code,

• run your control logic on any computer — no TwinCAT runtime, license, or PLC hardware required, and

• keep using the Beckhoff libraries your project references, backed by IronPLC’s bundled compatibility libraries.

• Check TwinCAT 3 Projects
• Run TwinCAT 3 Projects Without a PLC
• Use Beckhoff Libraries

What Works Today

IronPLC checks and executes Structured Text (the language behind most TwinCAT PLC code); graphical languages are not supported. Library support is early: IronPLC bundles compatibility implementations for a growing set of the most common Tc2_* libraries. See TwinCAT for the supported file formats and Compatibility Libraries for exactly which library functions are available.