In my experience, the most common competitor is Ciros.
I would like to hear your experiences and thoughts from both educational and industrial perspectives.
Thanks
Regard
Hi Bob Chen:
Any experiences with products that compete with FACTORY IO?
I’ll keep mine to myself, as it’s not with CIROS (in fact, I wasn’t even familiar with that simulator), but with another simulator that doesn’t need to be named here.
However, what I will say is that, having put the two together, my decision is clear. And I know a thing or two about simulators, not a lot, but something. I can confidently say two things, and this time I’m right:
1- I have no connection whatsoever with the company behind Factory IO.
2- Right now, Factory IO is the best thing in the world for learning to program, but with one caveat: AS IT IS, especially if they incorporate the improvements I’ve suggested, then it would have no competition.
This is my experience with simulators, FACTORY IO and its most direct competitor. For example, you can see the solved cases in this community.
From contribution 1 to 10, each contribution contains an average of 8 scenes, for a total of 180 different scenes covering every possible programming scenario. This means that until students complete at least half of these, Factory IO, as it stands, is too challenging for them.
Regards.
Hi, Amjavi6,
Thank you for sharing your experience.
I was not actively following this forum before, so could you share the 180 different scenes you mentioned? Just the names and a brief description would be enough. If possible, could you organize them into an Excel or TXT file and share them with me?
I would also like to explain why I raised the sensitive topic of competitors. In my market, most schools using simulation software want to connect it with real hardware systems in order to implement a true Digital Twin concept.
However, Factory I/O can only build its own virtual models and does not provide corresponding real industrial hardware systems. In contrast, Ciros has FESTO hardware systems that can be directly matched with the simulation environment. Because of this, many teachers are more willing to teach Digital Twin concepts using Ciros.
Another important point is that Ciros is the official simulation software used in the Industry 4.0 category of the WorldSkills Competition. Therefore, schools that want to explore industrial simulation software are often more willing to start with Ciros first.
These are just my personal observations and experiences. I would be very interested to hear more perspectives and experiences from others. Thank you, everyone.
Hi Bob Chen:
All the scenes, except those in contribution 7 and one other (which I can’t recall right now), are shared in the community—ALL of them. However, if a scene is missing and it’s not one of the reserved ones for reasons I don’t need to explain here, just ask, and I’ll share it not only with you but with the entire community. I have no problem doing that.
All the scenes are uploaded in phases so that students can follow them more easily. The first part of each phase is always a drawing done in Paint that details both the scene and how it works. Then, depending on what comes up, I’ll upload more or fewer videos. To see the videos, you have to go to my YouTube channel; I only upload the first and last ones here, not the ones in between.
The idea is to show students that there’s more to life than traffic lights, washing machines, elevators, and moving a box on a roller from one place to another.
Okay, so if we want to compare FACTORY IO with the CIROS simulator you mentioned, now that I’ve watched some CIROS videos on YouTube and know more or less what it is, I can tell you, without a doubt, that CIROS is nothing like FACTORY IO. Furthermore, this statement:
“Factory I/O can only create its own virtual models and does not provide corresponding real industrial hardware systems”
This argument simply doesn’t hold water. Just look at the 180 scenes that Factory IO has been able to create without even the slightest slowdown. You can see it in this community. Besides, CIROS only works with its own brand, while Factory IO can work with any brand.
And another thing: could you create any scene of mine with CIROS? I can tell you right now that you can’t, because it’s impossible to do it with CIROS. Currently, only FACTORY IO has reached this level.
Regards
For the cost, and user experience, Factory IO is by far the best learning tool for emulation that I have encountered. The lack of adjustability is a big win for FIO in the fact that users are locked into known working objects (They do work well for what they are, you just have to be crafty if you want to tweak the desired operation). The FIO team was really good at taking feedback from the community on the wish list before they started the baseline rewrite. From my understanding the original way it was coded in the backend required a lot work for them to implement a lot of things in the wish list and they are looking to expand the modeling capabilities. I am hoping when the new rollout happens, they will be just as attentive on the wish list.
If you’re looking more in the professional tools (WAY beyond cost effective for training classes like FIO), Visual Components is a really good simulation tool, they are starting to begin working in the emulation with their physics engine. It’s really well done tool, and easy to use. Siemens Plant Simulation was a neat tool, but lacks all physics engine abilities, and has a STEEP learning curve. Siemens also has SIMIT, but that’s more an emulator for IO signals more so than an emulation visualizer like FIO. Emulate 3D is another tool that is able to do physics and simulation. It’s super advanced and you can get yourself into DEEP trouble with the tool with some bad programming. This is probably the most advanced tool I have personally used, but you can do A LOT with it. Haha.
I still standby Factory IO being the best tool and most cost effective for training. I am super excited to see where the new release is heading, and what new features it will have.