For what it's worth, I'd like to make a comment. It's difficult to compare the various PLC vendors with the NI line of products such as cFP because eveyone has their various perceptions. In short for me, the NI products are far easier to program than typical PLC's because of the much greater flexibilty and the rich features found in the LabVIEW programming environment. I've programmed several PLC projects over the years that includes GE Fanuc, Allen-Bradely, Omron and Siemens (Including the S7-400 series) I'll take the LabVIEW environment any day over miserable ladder logic and the other versions such as instruction lists. The customer gets a better product when it is easier to program and test. I often provide features for the customer using LabVIEW and cFP that I would never think of doing using ladder logic. The bottom line is that it's too easy to compare hardware without consideration of the software or benifits of features available.
And then there are the customer's peceptions. Just the other day I met with a potential customer who hates Siemens with a passion because he had experienced a lot hardware failures. Conversely I have other customers who will not accept NI products only because they are not familiar with them. For example, their technical personnel are familiar with Allen-Bradley and so that's what they want to stay with. I have a very large international customer who has a corporate mandate to use Seimens. It goes on...
I consider my time to be somewhat valuable, which means that I have different pricing structures that are based on what the customer wants. When a customer requires a non-NI product, I literally double the charge for programming time. Some jobs I win and some I lose. However, I'm very busy in the mean time and will continue the preference of vi's over PLC programming.
