Studio 5000 Controller software

Community General
#1

L33er Ver34.0

I have a question about opening an existing file in Studio 5000. We just downloaded Studio 5000 version 34.0 however our .ACD files were configured for older software, in this case 20.01. 5000 is prompting us to change the controller type, although the next window looks like it is keeping the same controller type and just changing the software version (please see attached images for clarity). My question is what is the best action for us to take in order to safely open project files and to have compatibility with the controllers in our plant if we need to connect to them? I am new to Studio 5000 so I appreciate the help.

Thanks,
Jordan

#2

Hi Jordan,

Sorry for the late reply; I’m on vacation until next week!

Your question comes up frequently. The short answer is that your PLC firmware and software used to program it must match. In other words, to program a PLC that is on revision 20, your RSLogix must be version 20.

There are some caviats here…

  1. You can flash the firmware of your controller to v34. However, it may lead you down further problems; you must audit the system and determine if you’re able to do this without making other parts of the system incompatible.
  2. Do not install different versions of RSLogix / Studio on the same machine. Use a virtual machine. It may work on the same PC, but there are documented issues in various scenarios.
  3. My general advice is to flash the firmware of every PLC to a close version of the latest available; in other words I recommend that my clients to go v32 or v33 at this time. V34 may still have unknown bugs. See point 1 above before flashing.

To your original question, you can’t edit a program that was in v20 in Studio 5000 v34 and send that program to the controller. You either need v20 on your PC or you need to upgrade the controller to v34.

All the best,
Vlad

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