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TIA Portal allows you to concentrate on engineering without slowing down learning a new software. Its intuitive layout and navigation enables you to quickly recognize your desired programming and editing functions. Right from the beginning of every project, users may choose between a task-oriented portal view for simplified user guidance or a project view with fast access to all relevant tools.

The portal view guides users intuitively through every engineering step. Whether a controller is being programmed, an HMI screen is being designed or network connections are being configured, TIA Portal intuitively helps new and experienced users alike navigate in the most productive manner.

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Every software editor within TIA Portal is designed according to a common layout and navigation. Whether its hardware configuration, logic programming or HMI screen design, all environments share a similar editor design with the same time and cost saving intuitiveness.

Functions, properties and libraries are automatically displayed in accordance to their most intuitive view for each desired operation. Switching between editors is easier than imagined with "Intelligent Drag and Drop", "Autocompletion for tags" and many more advanced capabilities enabling engineering of an entire automation system not just a single device. The TIA Portal supports engineering tasks by integrating intelligence into the entire project – regardless of its complexity.

TIA Portal is an advanced software architecture designed on a simple navigation scheme. The graphical ergonomics guarantees the highest software efficiency and timesaving. All editors are clearly arranged and available from a single screen. You always have a complete overview of the project without having to click through complicated menus and window structures. This means the entire software works as an easily accessible framework. This is what we call "unprecedented intuitiveness".

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For engineers it is common practice to use a variety of tools at the same time when creating automation solutions. With theTotally Integrated Automation Portal it is possible for the first time to access all engineering systems using just one user interface. The TIA Portal is a powerful, graphic engineering framework, which functions as an individual program with a uniform user interface.

The TIA Portal has perfected the drag-and-drop function. Experience how the system´s intelligent drag-and-drop function makes it possible to apply tags across several editors. Never before was efficient programming and configuring so fast and easy. Symbols can be assigned to the corresponding hardware by dragging and dropping; tags can also be connected easily between controller and HMI in this way.The user has the opportunity of using both HMI and controller editors efficiently in one shared engineering environment.Connections are automatically generated in the background and the cross-reference table makes the tags available for use by you at all times throughout the project.

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One problem of traditional engineering systems is guaranteeing consistent data management. Every engineering tool only guarantees data consistency within its own system. Even if an attempt is made to standardize the interfaces, the configuring engineer is mainly responsible for the availability and consistency of the data, with all of the accompanying disadvantages such as additional work expenditure and increased susceptibility to errors.

The TIA Portal is based on shared data management: Any changes to application data which are made at any point in a project are automatically and immediately repeated at all of the other points of use.The various editors of the TIA Portal do not have to be opened for this.

The tag table is a common editor for global variables and constants. Large quantities of variables can be quickly generated using mechanisms familiar from Microsoft Excel. In the same way, many addresses can also be rewired simultaneously.

Project data usually has to be reused at different locations of a project and linked together across different editors. Intelligent Drag & Drop automatically generates these links for users. By means of central, consistent data management with a shared database for all editors, all changes to the application data are immediately and automatically updated within th eentire project.

The user can, of course, create the symbols in the customary way in the symbol table. In addition, STEP 7 V11 offers new, efficient methods of generating the symbols. Using the simple Drag & Drop function between the user program and the device view, the user can define the assignment of hardware to symbols. These symbols are automatically created in the symbol table. This saves the laborious searching for errors due to typing mistakes when filling the symbol table.

The automatic data consistency ensures that all locations at which a symbol is used are updated immediately, regardless of which editor was used to change a symbol. This one-time data input and the automatic data consistency save the user a lot of time.