**TIA Openness** is Siemens' official programming interface (API) for TIA Portal. It lets you read, write, export and import projects, blocks and configurations programmatically — instead of clicking every step by hand in the UI.

## What is it used for?

Anywhere repetition is involved: exporting blocks in bulk, comparing projects, finding unused references, generating standard blocks, creating interfaces automatically. What takes hours by hand runs in minutes over Openness.

## The prerequisite

Openness needs an installed TIA Portal (V15–V21) and a user in the Windows "Siemens TIA Openness" group. The project does not have to be open — tools like [AnyAutomation Studio](/en/studio) dock onto a running instance or read from the file.

## Openness + AI

This is where it gets interesting: combine Openness with an AI assistant and you get an end-to-end flow. The [AI generates SCL blocks](/en/ai-tia-portal), the Openness API imports them into the project, and a compile against the real project catches errors before anything reaches the PLC.

## Generate, import, verify

Generated code is only valuable once it provably runs. So the loop closes with [SCL unit tests](/en/scl-unit-test) and [Git/CI-CD](/en/tia-portal-ci-cd). More on automating over the API: [TIA Openness code generation](/en/tia-openness-code-generation) and the [introduction](/en/docs/introduction).


TIA Openness is Siemens' API for TIA Portal. What it does, what it's used for — and how AI generates and imports SCL code through it.

What is TIA Openness?

What is it used for?

The prerequisite

Openness + AI

Generate, import, verify