Model based documentation of automation applications

Automation applications consists of software projects that are developed using specific standard programming languages, such as the IEC 61131-3 standard that provides 5 programming languages, two textual and three graphical. They are also executed on specific hardware platforms, mainly Programmable Logic Controllers. Thus, they can be viewed as special type of software projects. As such, their design must follow the different phases of the life cycle process: development, exploitation and maintenance. This is even more important and necessary in the case of current complex automation applications. There are different international standards that define the information that must document all the phases of the life cycle. This paper deals with the automatic generation of the documentation of some of the phases or at least, the automatic generation of templates to be filled by the designers. The proposal is based on the Model based Engineering paradigm, in which the application is defined by domain specific models that are being transformed along the development phases until the application code is obtained.