New Activate User Coming from Simulink

Altair Forum User

I am a new user of Activate, and have a couple of questions, coming from a Simulink background:

 

1. Does Activate have a discrete-time fixed step solver (no continuous states)? Based on the documentation, I can find fixed step solvers of varying orders, but could not find any discrete solvers.

 

2. This may be a silly question, but for the life of me I cannot find a way to run the simulation step by step. There is only a run and a stop button (step forward and step back are not available). I need to run step-by-step for debugging purposes.

 

3. Is it possible to directly send variables from the Compose workspace to the Activate workspace? Right now, I am exporting the variables from Compose to a .mat file, and then loading the .mat file in Activate using an initialization script. This is not ideal, as I always need to ensure that the .mat file is up-to-date.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

João Marabisa

Hi Brock, 

 

Firstly I'd like to mention that nowadays we have a great capability to work with Simulink files (.slx), so in case of questions, please share with us in our forum. Regarding to your questions:

 

1. Activate is able to solve by a 'discrete-time fixed step solver', I understand your question once on Simulink you have a specific selection to this. Though Activate has no an 'explicit option' you could choose your step solver settings, as well:

 

 

Recently a colleague discussed with us this solver option, as mentioned as below:

 

 

'The models are equivalent, except the last one where the output of the sinewave generator, depending on what goes on in the rest of the model and the solver setting may produce intermediate useless values (so a possible slight loss of optimality). Note also that in this case Activate knows that the output of the filter is a discrete-signal so the scope displays the signal more appropriately (as a piece-wise constant signal instead of performing linear interpolation used to plot continuous-time signals).'

 

2. On Activate there are some options to debug your model, the easiest one is:

 

 

With that option you could analyze how the is the signal through the blocks. You can also set as 'off' some specifics blocks to disconsider them:

 

 

3. Yes, it is possible to import some OML files to read them as variables on Activate. Myself in particular use this:

 

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

 

You could actually just go to: File - Open - Select OML as file extension - Select it. It will work as well.

 

If you prefer, tell us if you have a specific application or more questions.

 

João.