simscape vs modelica

[pietro82]

Hi all,

I'm a simscape user and today I heard about modelica. They look very similar, but modelica should have a much wider library than simscape. So I have in mind to switch to any modelica tool. Does anyone have any experience with any modelica tool? For what is it better than simscape? What would I miss switching to modelica?

thanks

Pietro

 

[GregLocock]

Not that i know anything much about it, but which package were you intending to use, modelica itself is a solver and associated language specification, most people wrap it up to make it useful.

Cheers

Greg Locock


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[pietro82]

Hi Greg,

before switching to a licensed package I have in mind to use an open source one such as "jmodelica" and after that I would look for a commercial package. Is it possibile to run a modelica simulation built with a package into another ones at least without using any package specific library? As example a dymola simulation into Amesim one? What is more used in the industry simscape o modelica?

Thanks

Regards

 

[SomptingGuy]

My opinion is that Mathworks saw Modelica arriving, decided not to buy into it and rushed a product out to try to kill it off. Other companies took Modelica (which is a language, not a product) and implemented it. The open Modelica compilers are getting better. OpenModelica claim to support 98% of the language now. But it's not for the faint hearted. You need to be a bit of a hacker to use it. Or (as Greg implied), pay someone to wrap it up for you.

- Steve

 

[SomptingGuy]

From the OpenModelica site:

https://www.openmodelica.org/index....news/229-october-09-openmodelica-190-released

(I'm not in any way affiliated with the project)

- Steve

 

[pietro82]

Thanks SomptingGuy. What do you think about simscape? I'm a five years matlab user and I love it. For me simscape was over the top before getting to know modelica with its huge library in some commercial packages. Is it possibile to parametrize simulations like in Simscape thanks to the matlab enviroment?

Thanks

cheers

Pietro

 

[SomptingGuy]

To be honest, I've not actually seen Simscape in the flesh, just read about it. I did notice that it doesn't crop up that much in comp.soft-sys.matlab discussions, which suggest to me that it's not widely used. I may be wrong though, as I've not been following that (USENET) group much in recent times. I'm guessing that the benefits over a Modelica implementation would be the ability to interact directly with Matlab, rather than writing files and then having to read them. (I'm a 23 years Matlab user)

- Steve

 

[pietro82]

Hi SomptingGuy,

thanks for your reply. You're on right, even the simscape group in the mathworks website doeasn't crop up that much. I'll try to do some easy simulation with modelica and compare with the one I have done with simscape.
23 years Matlab user?! You use it from the first release!!!

 

[SomptingGuy]

23 years... I think it was something like version 3. First day of new job after graduation and my life-long love affair started immediately. My job involves a lot of messing around with MEX files, mostly in Simulink these days. The interface is really good if you are a C hacker.

- Steve

 

[pietro82]

Cool! What is your working field?

 

[SomptingGuy]

Working field? Engine (and to a lesser extent, vehicle) simulation. But this is all in my info on this site.

- Steve

 

[pietro82]

Cool! Do you use modelica tool?

 

[SomptingGuy]

I have used OpenModelica. I found that to do anything interesting required writing external C code though.

- Steve

 

[pietro82]

ok. Thanks!

 

[FeX32]

I also use Simscape. And have tried a few other multibody dynamic packages as well.
A few of note (other than Simscape):
- MSC Adams (to which a few members of this forum are experts with)
- MapleSim (

http://www.maplesoft.com/products/maplesim/)

MapleSim is similar to Simscape in terms of its graphical programming interface and the ability to write custom functions within the simulations.

Cheers,


Fe (IronX32)

 

[FeX32]

Forgot to mention that MapleSim is modelica based but packaged and developed my MapleSoft


Fe (IronX32)

 

[GregLocock]

Interestingly Simscape came up on the radar just recently, several European vehicle OEMs use it for some aspects of vehicle dynamics. The comment was that the solver itself is fast and accurate but does not tolerate modelling errors elegantly. I do not know anything about how people have constructed a GUI wrapper for it, my opinion is that a fancy GUI is not amazingly useful, but there are plenty around to copy. I have written model parsers in excel and matlab and py (ie you enter a table of hardpoints and components, it spits out a run file) and so long as you are just writing for one architecture it seems fairly easy, if dull.

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

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[FeX32]

"the solver itself is fast and accurate but does not tolerate modelling errors elegantly"

I must agree. Even some small modeling errors can be hard to debug as the errors Simulink outputs are sometimes erroneous.


Fe (IronX32)

 

[FeX32]

I still prefer Simscape over Maplesim. This is largely due to my 6+ years experience with Matlab.


Fe (IronX32)

 

[skanskan]

Hi.
You should also try Wolfram SystemModeler