Beckhoff has been a pioneer in open standards for many years, allowing its customers to benefit from its particularly extensive interoperability with third-party products. For this reason, Beckhoff also develops add-on software for various third-party software solutions. The purpose of these optional add-ons is to link the third-party software with Beckhoff hardware and software. The communication between SOLIDWORKS^® or MATLAB^® with TwinCAT 3, or using LabVIEW^TM-VIs to configure Beckhoff EtherCAT devices on the NI^TM real-time system are examples of this.

Advantages of the add-on software

• Beckhoff hardware is integrated into the third-party system without any barriers
• flexible, high-performance TwinCAT software communication with third-party software
• Beckhoff hardware and software can be integrated into established and learned software environments
• more freedom and alternatives in the choice of components for the customer's system