Using Twincat

For those who've used Twincat to read drives, how did you do it?

I've downloaded Twincat3, and it's installed as part of Visual Studio, but I'm not sure what to do now.
I've had a quick look over the manual, but I'm not sure what section I need to follow, or if there are any better guides to follow in order to communicate with slaves?

Create an xml project and scan io devices using a right click on devises . Select NCi in the opening box and you are good to go.

I've managed to get the drives detected (I hadn't correctly installed the ethercat driver for the ethernet port), and have worked out how to read the PDOs from the drives, which has populated various values, but how do you go about getting the drives to enter OP mode?

If I click for OP mode in a drive, I get a pop-up message saying the Master is still in PREOP, but if I go into master and select OP mode, nothing happens. I can select INIT mode and back to PREOP, but nothing else.

you have to start Twincat for this. "Activate configuration" or stay in Config mode and enable freerun.

Next error.
Device 1 (ethercat) needs sync master (at least one variable linked to a task variable).
I can see the Sync Units section, but have no idea how it should be linked.

Would anybody have an example project I could look at, that shows at least 1 drive and how it gets configured so I can do a test run?

there are examples and how to s ....

Syncmaster tells that you need to connect at least 1 object from I/O to an task.
You can create an NC-Task and link an Axis to the drive, or create an PLC Programm....

Its easier to use free-run in config mode.

if the the drives then reachs op state, check if you can get an feedback value.