User Interface

Workbench Overview

AnyAutomation Studio uses the familiar editor workbench layout, divided into several areas:

• Activity Bar (far left) — a vertical strip of icons, one per view container. It hosts the Openness Manager container (PLC-rack icon, handles the TIA Portal connection), the PLC Online container, the built-in Explorer, Search and Source Control, and any installed extensions.
• Side Bar (left) — shows the views of the active container, such as the TIA Project Explorer tree.
• Editor area (center) — blocks and panes open here as editors, side by side or split.
• Panel (bottom) — Output, Problems, and Terminal.
• Status Bar (very bottom) — the connection state with the TIA version and project name (plus the instance count when several are attached) and the license badge.

Activity Bar

Each icon in the Activity Bar opens a view container in the Side Bar:

Clicking the Openness Manager icon opens its Side Bar with the Project Explorer above the Import / Export view; the collapsed TIA References view fills in when you run Find References on a block.

Side Bar — Project Explorer

• Shows the structure of the opened TIA Portal project
• Hierarchy: Project → Hardware → Source → PLC → Blocks/Datatypes/Tags
• Checkboxes enable multiple selection for export

Editor area

Documents and panes open in the central editor area as tabs, the same way text files do. You can open several at once and arrange them side by side (see Workspace Layout):

• Block source — double-click a block in the Project Explorer to open its read-only SCL / STL / graphical source in an editor.
• Import / Export — the workspace for file operations, opened from the Openness Manager Side Bar.
• Compare Editor — compare a project against a second project or against your export folder; the Compare Editor Activity Bar entry opens its launcher view, and pressing Compare opens this editor.
• Find Unused — dead-code detection and cleanup; the Find Unused Activity Bar entry opens its launcher view, and running it opens this editor.
• TIA References — where-used results for a block; opens from Find References on a block.
• Password Vault — encrypted storage for know-how-protection passwords.
• PLC Online — the OPC UA / S7 online editor (one pane, multiple PLCs as inner connection tabs).
• PLCSim — the PLCSim Advanced control pane (available on Pro and above).

Command Palette and Quick Open

• Command Palette — press Ctrl+Shift+P to find and run any command by name, including every Openness Manager command (Connect to Openness Manager, Compile Project, Export Selected, Import Selected, and so on).
• Quick Open — press Ctrl+P to jump to a file by name.
• Settings — press Ctrl+, to open Settings; type a prefix such as tiaPortal to filter to this product's options.

Documentation

Open this manual from Help → AnyAutomation Documentation (or the AnyAutomation Documentation command in the Command Palette). It opens anyautomation.ch/docs in your browser, where you can search, switch language, and follow cross-links between pages.

Panel

The bottom panel contains:

• Output — application log messages with color-coded severity, with a dropdown to pick the log channel.
• Problems — diagnostics aggregated across open editor files; every row shows the file name with line and column, and a click jumps the editor to that exact location.
• Terminal — integrated terminal for command-line operations.

The panel can be collapsed, expanded, or maximized using the controls in its top-right corner, and moved to the left, right, or bottom of the window (see Workspace Layout).

Copying Values from Data Fields

Read-only data fields throughout the application can be selected with the mouse and copied with Ctrl+C like any text input. This includes CPU identity (MLFB, serial number, firmware), OPC UA diagnostics (server build, session counters, capabilities), license information (account email, hardware ID, expiry date), connection details (endpoint URL, IP address, security mode), and error or status messages. Static field labels are not selectable; values are.

Copying Data Out of the PLC Online Pane

The grids in the PLC Online pane let you get values out for a spreadsheet, ticket, or chat:

• Address-space tree — right-click a node for Copy Node ID and Copy Browse Path.
• References grid — right-click a row for Copy Node ID, Copy Browse Name, or Copy as JSON.
• Watch table — right-click a row for Copy Node ID, or use Export CSV in the table toolbar to write all rows to a .csv file.
• Event log — use Export CSV in the toolbar to write the captured events to a .csv file.