CyclogramAsk a forum what software people use for cyclograms and the honest answer, for years, has been "whatever was open": a spreadsheet, a slide, a drawing program, or an HMI screen on the finished machine. There is no established product category, which is why the question keeps being asked. This page sorts the tools that get used into kinds, says what each is good at, and where it stops — including the one made here.
The job to be done
A machine cycle diagram (a cyclogram, timing chart, Zyklogramm, cyclogramme) has a short list of duties:
- Show every actuator's movements on a common time axis, with their real durations.
- Hold the dependencies — what waits for what — so that the cycle time follows from them.
- Re-time the chart when a stroke, a dwell or a dependency changes.
- Catch two movements that overlap where they must not, and a movement that runs over the cycle boundary.
- Be readable by the mechanical designer, the controls engineer and the customer alike.
Hold the tools against that list and they separate quickly.
The kinds of tool
| Kind | Typical tools | Draws the bars | Cycle time from dependencies | Re-times on a change | Where it stops |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spreadsheet | Excel, Google Sheets, LibreOffice Calc | Coloured cells or a stacked-bar "Gantt" | Only as far as you write formulas | Formulas only | Every dependency is hand-built; no ramps, no wrap, no overlap check |
| Drawing program | Visio, draw.io, Lucidchart, PowerPoint | Yes, by hand | No | No — every change is a redraw | A picture of a chart, not a chart |
| Electronics timing-diagram tools | WaveDrom, PlantUML timing diagrams | Signal waveforms from text | No | Re-renders the text | Built for digital levels and edges, not for strokes with durations |
| PLC traces and HMI screens | TIA Portal trace, Studio 5000 trends, a sequence-of-operations screen | Of the running machine | Measures it | n/a | Needs the machine to exist; nothing for the design stage |
| Cycle-time monitoring suites | MachineMetrics, Bosch Nexeed Cycle Time Assist, Arburg CycleAssist, Rexroth MTX analyser | Of the running machine | Measures it | n/a | Finds losses on a machine in production; cannot design one |
| Simulation / virtual commissioning | Siemens Process Simulate and Mechatronics Concept Designer, Visual Components, Emulate3D | As a by-product of a 3D model | Yes, from the model | Yes, after re-modelling | Days of modelling and enterprise licences before the first bar appears |
| Dedicated cyclogram editor | Cyclogram | Yes, strokes drawn as ramps | Yes, from bindings | Live, while you drag | No physics, no CAD, no measurement of a real machine |
A word on each.
Spreadsheets
The default, and not a bad one. The classic layout is one row per actuator and one column per time slot (0.1 s, say), with cells coloured where the actuator moves; the other is a stacked-bar chart built from start and duration columns. Formulas can compute each start from a predecessor's end, which turns the sheet into a small critical-path calculator — the free template does exactly that. The limits are structural: a cell is on or off, so a stroke cannot be drawn as the slope it is; a movement that waits for two things, or crosses the cycle end, is handled by hand; and nothing stops you painting two movements of one cylinder on top of each other. Cyclogram vs Excel goes through the breaking points with a worked station.
Drawing programs
Visio, draw.io and their relatives make the best-looking charts and the least useful ones. Nothing in the drawing knows that this bar waits for that one; change a stroke and you redraw the downstream half of the picture, and then check it. Fine for the chart that is drawn once and framed. Wrong for the one that will change twenty times before the machine is built, which is all of them.
Timing-diagram tools from electronics
WaveDrom and PlantUML's timing diagrams define signal waveforms in text and render them consistently, which is excellent for a bus protocol or a handshake. They model levels and edges: a signal is high or low, and time is a sequence of steps or a scale. A machine movement is a duration with a shape, and its dependencies hang on the inside of the bar (the clamp closes when the slide has arrived, not when its whole stroke is done). The tools can be bent to it; they were not built for it.
PLC traces, HMI screens and monitoring suites
Every controls platform can record what the machine actually did: a trace in TIA Portal or Studio 5000, a sequence screen on the HMI showing each step's design time against its actual time, or a product such as MachineMetrics' machine timeline or Bosch's Nexeed Cycle Time Assist that reads the PLC and finds where the seconds go. These are indispensable after the machine exists. They answer "why is it slower than designed?", not "how fast can it be?", and they need a machine to measure. The cyclogram is the drawing you make before there is anything to trace, and the one you hold the trace against afterwards.
Simulation and virtual commissioning
Process Simulate, Mechatronics Concept Designer, Visual Components and Emulate3D model the machine in 3D, run the PLC code against it and report real collisions, not just overlaps in time. When the project can carry the modelling effort and the licence, nothing else gives the same confidence. The cycle chart falls out of the model, but it is a by-product: you cannot sketch a cycle in an afternoon with these, and most stations never get that treatment.
A dedicated cyclogram editor
Cyclogram is built for the five duties above and nothing else. Each actuator is a lane; each movement a bar with its stroke out, its dwell and its stroke back drawn as a trapezoid; dependencies are bindings between the bars' hooks with an offset, so a slower clamp re-times the drill and the eject by itself and the cycle time updates while you drag. It flags two movements of one actuator that overlap, draws the cycle boundary and the wrap, keeps a library of actuators you reuse, and exports PDF and Excel. It runs in the browser, keeps every project on your own machine, and the free edition has every editing feature within two actuators and six movements. What it is not: it has no geometry, so it knows nothing about parts colliding in space; it is not CAD; and it does not watch a running machine. Those jobs belong to the two rows above it.
Picking by stage
- Concept, first afternoon: a spreadsheet or a sketch. Write the sequence, add up the durations, see the gap to the takt.
- Design, while the station is changing: a dedicated editor. This is where the chart earns its keep, because it is redrawn fifty times and must stay right.
- Commissioning: the PLC trace, held against the designed chart.
- Production: a monitoring suite, to find what drifted.
- High-stakes stations: simulation on top, when the budget and the geometry justify it.
Sources and further reading
- The question itself: "What software do you use for cyclograms?", a thread on the MrPLC forum that still has no settled answer.
- The spreadsheet approach, laid out by a controls engineer: Automation Primer, "Design Tools".
- Text-defined timing diagrams: WaveDrom and PlantUML's timing diagram.
- Measuring the running machine: MachineMetrics' machine timeline and Bosch's Nexeed Cycle Time Assist.
- What the chart is and how to draw one: What is a cyclogram? and How to draw a cyclogram.