Apprentice again, trying to run a 1515-2 PN project against PLCSIM Advanced on my own laptop before I'm allowed near the machine. TIA V17, PLCSIM Advanced V4.0 I think, the icon just says V4.
In the control panel I pick "PLCSIM Virtual Eth. Adapter", start the instance, give it 192.168.0.1, and it goes green, RUN. In TIA I do Go online with the PG/PC interface on my laptop's Intel Ethernet, Start search, and the list stays empty every time. I turned the Windows firewall off, reinstalled PLCSIM Advanced and restarted everything twice.
Ok so is the instance not really on the network, or is TIA looking in the wrong place? I think I'm pointing TIA at the wrong adapter, but I don't want to guess my way down that dropdown.
One question. In the Go online dialog, open the PG/PC interface dropdown and list every entry it offers, exactly as written.
Three entries: "Intel(R) Ethernet Connection I219-LM", "Siemens PLCSIM Virtual Ethernet Adapter", and "PLCSIM". I've only ever picked the first one.
Pick the one that matches how you started the instance. You started it on the virtual adapter, so choose "Siemens PLCSIM Virtual Ethernet Adapter" and search again. Had you started it with PLCSIM, the Softbus option, you would pick "PLCSIM". The Intel card is your real network, the instance is not on it.
One more thing with the virtual adapter: Windows gives that adapter its own IP, and the instance has to be on the same subnet as that. So if the adapter sits at 192.168.0.100 your 192.168.0.1 is fine.
Someone did a decent article on the sim side of this: https://plctr.com/introduction-to-plc-simulation-and-virtual-commissioning/
Picked the virtual adapter in the dropdown, the instance showed up straight away, downloaded, online, watch table working.
So TIA was searching my real network card the whole time while the instance sat on the virtual one, and picking the right interface in Go online was all it took. The firewall had nothing to do with it.
The adapter in Windows was on 169.254 something at first and the search still found the instance, and I'm not sure why, given the subnet thing. Changed it to 192.168.0.100 anyway. Thanks ines31 and pnina.
Search is DCP, it finds by name before IP. The download needs the subnet.