Sym3 interfaces with one or more external devices to provide testing capabilities for PLC code and other software. Sym3 emulates the hardware of a system:

• responds to PLC output requests and
• supplies appropriate input to the PLC based or emulate hardware state.

All communications are channeled through a PLC Device. Various messages can be sent through the PLC Device, each messages body is defined by a data type.. Once messages and devices are configured, they can be used to interact with the simulation using script. Alternatively, you can configure PLC Device IOs to easily map basic equipment map properties to a PLCIO message block. The natural configuration steps are:

1. Configure PLC Device
2. Configure the messages
3. Configure the DataType

And/or

1. Configure PLC Device
2. Configure the IOs.

Project Samples:

1. Creating products from an external application. This project illustrates how to create products on reception of a message from an external application. If the message includes a Barcode field, the property Identifier of the products are set to the barcode field value. In this sample, the external application is another instance of Sym3 Integrator being a TCP client, sending messages to the Server project.
2. Basic IO configuration sample. This example has two projects. One emulating the equipment, the other emulating the PLC.
3. Interfacing with Sym3 OPC Server sample. This project illustrates how to drive Sym3 OPC server to emulate PLC+OPC server for SCADA testing.

From version 5.2 onwards it is possible to convert an existing Operator project (.s3o) back into an Integrator project by loading the Operator file into Integrator, save it under a different name, close and reopen it in Integrator. You may need to open a new 3D view. The Operator specific components will be removed from the project.