TwinCAT 3 EtherCAT Simulation

Virtual machine commissioning becomes possible if the EtherCAT cable of the machine computer is simply plugged into a simulation computer, without the need for reconfiguration. With the TwinCAT 3 EtherCAT Simulation function and a network adapter the simulation computer can simulate a number of EtherCAT slaves. For configuration purposes the EtherCAT slaves of the original machine configuration are inverted. All EtherCAT features necessary for machine simulation are modeled – including distributed clocks. Since the communication protocols CoE and SoE are implemented, acyclic commands can also be processed in the simulation environment.