What's new in TIA Portal for a beginner?
First, I would like to say there is a wealth of information on TIA Portal. 21 21-day trial of TIA Portal can be found here,
This Overview of the most important documents for TIA Portal. This one is specific to controllers in TIA Portal and is broken down into the most commonly sought-after. There is no short way of describing all the details found in this section for a person who needs to understand what TIA Portal has in a very quick manner.
The Siemens Programming Style guide is a great first stop for anyone who needs to be more understanding of the requirements of the TIA Portal software in terms of just straight-up configurations of coding. This document landing page on Siemens Industry Online Support is a great place for gaining access to how to design with Siemens PLC and WinCC Unified Visualization Systems. Also, know there are a multitude of different protocols that Siemens can achieve. Profinet, S7, TCP/IP, Modbus TCP, and OPC UA can be achieved with native instructions. Many more via libraries.
The underlying theme of Siemens TIA Portal-based equipment is the use of Profinet which provides numerous things like high-speed motion control, among the most important and that is diagnostics.
There are several PI North America events held by the entity that owns Profinet.
https://us.profinet.com/training/one-day-training/
TIA Portal with an S7-Controller uses Profinet as a standard and is capable of providing network communication all the same as one would expect from a control, with one slight twist; its underlying core principles are for diagnostics to be built right into the device without any extra effort. This idea of diagnostics by design has proven valuable for customers as they will be guided to the error with a solution. This is counter to the way our competition performs the actions, and that is instead to rely text that the programming engineer decided to place at that date. The flagship S7-1500 provides the widest diagnostic concept and the document below presents about five different ways one could read diagnostics from a Profinet PLC system. Go online with the PLC and view the live alarms, create a Profinet error by pulling a remote IO Card, stop the PLC, and the alarm and error text is still generated with a solution in plain text.
So let's assume you have never connected a Siemens system in TIA Portal.
This TIA Portal tutorial center can provide video-based tutorials on TIA Portals setup, and configuration, and quick guides on getting acquainted with the software and hardware.
The best part is many of the blocks one could try to build are already solved.
https://support.industry.siemens.com/cs/document/109738702/libraries-in-the-tia-portal?lc=en-us
For example, this landing page houses a spot where Siemens library like the Library of General Functions is found.
If there were more things to elaborate on it would be this. Siemens has a great advantage in Safety Circuits and design with a PLC. Using Profinet with built-in Profisafe, it is really easy to take advantage of up to SIL3 designs with any of the automation families that are selected. Very similar to the original Programming style guide from above this "safety" style guide is super beneficial, but as always, it's best to reach out to your Siemens Expert for safety-related, pre-limitary, system run downs.
Last but not least, once you fully understand the preliminary requirements to program and download, the library system is a well-rounded area where Version control is easily rolled out. The link below is a guideline for handling standards and libraries. Few vendors can match the system that is built right into the same Integrated Automation system.
Siemens is always future thinking and TIA Portal isn't the only way we see users working; Siemens coined the word Industry 4.0.
Siemens is well invested in research and design so that we can offer things like cloud computing with Mind Sphere. We even now offer Edge opportunities along with different ways to target and use our software with something like a complete solution wrapped into an Industrial PC with virtualized services possible like a Virtual PLC. Here are a few more links about Siemens's future thinking and where the industry is headed. There we see IT/OT convergence, and here are a few ways to build such a system.
Mindsphere: https://plm.sw.siemens.com/en-US/insights-hub/
Insights Hub industrial IoT as a service | Siemens Software
Siemens Insights Hub industrial IoT as a service enables you to command full transparency over your operations by connecting your assets to a central location.
plm.sw.siemens.com
Siemens Industrial Edge - https://www.siemens.com/global/en/products/automation/topic-areas/industrial-edge.html
Industrial Edge – edge computing for Industry 4.0
Industrial Edge provides an IoT, edge computing architecture, to optimize industrial automation, maintenance, IT-OT connectivity, and plant data analytics.
Simatic AX - https://www.siemens.com/global/en/products/automation/industry-software/automation-software/simatic-ax.html
SIMATIC AX: Automation at the speed of software development
A lean development environment for programming and maintaining SIMATIC PLCs.
I do think it is hard for any competitor to reach the true end-to-end solution that you will find in Siemens. The diagnostics concept alone is the thing that few can match.