Configure EtherCAT Motion Bus

Double-click the EtherCAT node in the Project Explorer to open the EtherCAT properties dialog in the workspace. This window is composed of following tabs:

Tab Description
EtherCAT Devices tab Displays all the E-Bus devices present in the project tree
EtherCAT Master Settings Tab Allows you to configure the EtherCAT bus master
ENI File Tab Allows you to use an external configuration file
ESI Files Tab Display, add, and remove available ESI files

KAS includes an integrated tool to configure the EtherCAT master and start up the fieldbus operation.

The configuration tool enables you to:

About Slave devices

Slave devices can support several PDOs (for the list, PDOs for AKD, AKD2G, AKD-N, and S300/S700). Some of them are mandatory; others are optional.

One of the main tasks of the EtherCAT configuration is to select the PDOs used by each slave (see also EtherCAT Devices Summary Form) and group them all in the EtherCAT image.


  • PDOs contain real-time cyclic data which is deterministic. Non-cyclic data is not deterministic and is defined by Service Data Objects (SDO).

As explained in the introduction, input and output parameters are grouped in predefined blocks called PDOs.

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