Hi Pamela,

Some years ago, i've done a thing like that, but not for PLC. At that time, i usually create the information and send to another application (just by curiosity, it was CODESOFT). It worked fine. We had a lot of help of CODESOFT's technitians that gave us all the functions we should use to open, work and close with the other application.
Right now, we work with small terminals that are "spreaded" for production areas, but we don't have any connection with that. We have a partnership with another company that converts all the signals into data, and save on a DBF file.
Sorry, but i can help with PLC stuff, because i don't have enough knowledge on this area.

Good luck,

Ricardo