The EtherCAT protocol has become a very promising alternative for real-time industrial application due to its ability to eliminate uncertainties in the Ethernet. However, the extended markup language (XML) for the EtherCAT network system, which is required in the design, lacks systematic development to take advantage of model transformation techniques. This paper focuses on the system development procedure of the EtherCAT-based encoder system using the CANopen over EtherCAT (CoE) protocol. UML modeling is being adapted to design for XML of EtherCAT-based encoder system. To this purpose, this paper analyzes the object dictionary (OD) of a commercial encoder and CANopen over EtherCAT. A UML diagram is then designed based on the analysis, and XML is generated through the designed UML diagram. Finally, an experimental test_bed for the EtherCAT-based encoder system is implemented and its performance is compared with a commercial encoder.