WinCC OA UI Panel Viewer

March 6, 2026 · View on GitHub

Version License VS Code Coverage Quality gate Released

A fast, read-only VS Code extension that transforms opaque WinCC OA .pnl panel files into a navigable, structured tree view — letting you inspect shapes, properties, scripts, and references without leaving your editor.

Part of the WinCC OA Tools Pack.

Features

Panel Tree View

Open any .pnl or .xml panel file and see its structure as a collapsible tree: shapes, sub-shapes, properties, scripts, and references — all organized in a clear hierarchy. Directory-aware grouping keeps multi-panel projects tidy.

Details Pane

Select any shape or property node in the tree to view its full details in a dedicated side panel.

Virtual CTL Script Documents

Click a script node to open its CTL source as a read-only virtual document with full syntax highlighting — no need to extract scripts manually.

Live File Watcher

The extension watches for changes to loaded .pnl files and automatically refreshes the tree when a panel is saved externally (e.g. from the WinCC OA GEDI editor).

Panel Preview (WinCC OA native UI)

Launch WCCOAui directly from VS Code to preview a panel in the native WinCC OA runtime — one click from the tree view or the Command Palette.

PNL ↔ XML Conversion

Convert individual files or entire directories between the binary .pnl format and human-readable .xml — useful for diffing, code review, or version control.

Panel Syntax Check

Run WCCOAui -syntax on any panel from the Command Palette, the Explorer context menu, or the tree view title bar. The extension surfaces lines containing WARNING, SEVERE, or FATAL from the WinCC OA output so you can quickly spot problems.

Requirements

  • VS Code 1.109.2 or higher
  • WinCC OA 3.19+ installed on your system
  • Companion extension: WinCC OA Project Admin (provides project context used by this extension)

Experimental: AI / LLM Integration

This extension includes an experimental integration with VS Code language-model tools so assistants like GitHub Copilot can inspect and validate WinCC OA panels. APIs, behavior, and tool names may still change.

Current benefits (experimental):

  • Panel structure as JSON – AI can call tools to read the parsed panel model (shapes, properties, scripts, references, basic errors) and reason about it.
  • Summarize panels – AI can get a compact, natural-language style summary with key shape types, script events, and error counts to quickly understand a panel.
  • Open panels in UI viewer – AI can open .pnl or .xml panels in the WinCC OA UI viewer (with XML converted to PNL on the fly) without you leaving the chat.
  • On-demand pnl ↔ xml conversion – AI can trigger single-file or directory conversions between .pnl and .xml, so you can ask it to "convert this directory to XML and inspect panel X".
  • Panel syntax check via -syntax – AI (and now a VS Code command) can run WCCOAui -syntax for a panel and surface lines containing WARNING, SEVERE, or FATAL from stderr/logs, helping you quickly see whether a panel is obviously broken.
  • Auto-loading by file path – Most tools accept an absolute panel path and will load the panel into the internal tree on demand; you do not need to manually open the panel first.

Safety-wise, these AI tools are currently read-only for panel content; they either inspect panels or run conversions/syntax checks you explicitly ask for.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for development setup, build scripts, branching model, and CI details.

License

MIT License. See https://github.com/winccoa-tools-pack/.github/blob/main/LICENSE.

Disclaimer

WinCC OA and Siemens are trademarks of Siemens AG. This project is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Siemens AG. This is a community-driven open source project created to enhance the development experience for WinCC OA developers.

Made with ❤️ for and by the WinCC OA community