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2021.2

This version was released on 2021-JUN-15

Modelon is proud to release Modelon Impact 2021.2 – delivering significant improvements and critical features. Launched in July 2020, Modelon Impact has set out to disrupt the way organizations engineer complex systems, keeping the barrier to modeling and simulation software as low as possible

New Features🔗

  1. Parameter sweeps with automatic parallelization of compilations
  2. Official 3D-animation support
  3. Library browser filter
  4. FMU Co-simulation Import
  5. UI-support for working with libraries with syntax errors
  6. Local equation balance checker

Improvements🔗

  1. Modelica code editor
  2. Plotting
  3. Additional features and enhancements

Parameter sweeps with automatic parallelization of compilations🔗

Parameter sweep

Parameter sweeps now include user interface support for experiment setup that require multiple compilations. This improves the productivity as compilations are automatic parallelized.

New functionality

  • Experiment support for “structural parameters” using range() and choices() operators
  • Automatic scheduling and parallelization of compilations

Improved Modelica code editor🔗

Improved Modelica code editor

There has been a significant improvement of the Modelica code editor making it easier and more efficient for the experienced Modelica developers to create models programmatically.

New functionality

  • Quickly navigate to a class

    • Open class by Ctrl + click
    • Use arrows to navigate back and forth classes

  • Improved readability

    • Theme selection – use a dark or light theme
    • Code folding – annotations are folded
    • Bracket matching - see where code block start and end
    • Comment code – use Ctrl-B to comment/uncomment code
    • Word wrap – long lines are wrapped into multiple lines

Official 3D-animation support🔗

3D-animation

3D-animation is now an official feature after being experimental since the 2021.0 release.

New functionality and improvements

  1. Out of the box support – no need to enable any settings
  2. Improved selection of objects – incl hiding objects to allow selection of objects inside
  3. View 3D animation only show up if animation is available
  4. Export 3D-animation as GLB format - GLB is a widely supported binary 3D-format that can be embedded into presentations (e.g. PowerPoint)
  5. A lot of quality improvements!

Library browser filter🔗

Library browser filter

Quickly find a model or file using a library browser filter.

  • Filter as you type with instant feedback
  • Filter by model, package or file name

FMU Co-simulation Import🔗

FMU Co-simulation Import

It is now possible to import a co-simulation FMU1 and connect and simulate it with Modelica models. A common use-case is to import a controller develop in a 3rd party tool and connect it with a system model.

  • FMU-import tool that automatically import a FMU and generate a Modelica wrapper model

1 Support for CS-FMUs generated on the same Operating System that Modelon Impact runs on (Windows on Desktop & CentOS 7 at On-prem)

UI-support for working with libraries and models with syntax errors🔗

Models with syntax errors

Support for import and load of libraries and models with syntax errors.

New functionality

  • Import or load a library - Syntax errors show up as red dots in package browser. Light red dots indicate a syntax error in a model inside a package
  • Resolve issue - Manually resolve issues in the code editor. Editor help indicate where the issue is.

Note - Only libraries stored in a folder structure with syntax errors can be imported

Local equation balance checker🔗

Local equation balance checker

Quickly verify that an equation system is locally balanced. This can increase productivity as a common error mode where equations & variables don’t match up can be detected early.

Plotting improvements🔗

Customize colors

  • Select a trajectory or result point and modify the colors using a plot UI
  • Color settings can be saved to views
  • Multi-color mode for parameter sweeps
    • Click on Edit “Line color” and choose multi-color icon to enable it

Units on the Y-axis

  • See the unit on the Y-axis

Additional features and enhancements🔗

Performance

  • Quickly inspect a component - Major loading time speed-up when inspecting a component, i.e. when navigating to a sub-system
  • Simulation speed-up – reduce overhead when executing from UI
  • Improved symbolic manipulation – can in special cases reduce the size of equation systems which improves simulation performance
  • Support for Modelica inverse annotation - can improve simulation speed and robustness.

Usability

  • Improved source-code formatting
    • Duplicating a model now preserves formatting
  • Improved compiler error messages for failed size evaluations
  • Improved diagnostics for encrypted models – easier to debug models including encrypted components
  • View result of a cancelled simulations
  • Improved support for redeclared components
  • Unit settings support at experiment setup – easier to setup experiments on a larger time scale
  • Support for Modelica annotation HideResult

Model utilization

  • Improved optimization toolchain – support for more Modelica constructs in the Casadi-toolchain
    • Support of external functions, functions with unknown sizes, nested functions with unknown sizes, enumerations, better handling of if-statements
    • Increased the performance of CasADi transfer by around 60% for large models
  • New solver for CS FMU export - Runge-Kutta (2nd order).
  • Custom function improvements – option to specify if a pre-compiled FMU is not required

Improved Python scripting support in OCT

  • Model statistics in json-format
    • Set compiler option “generate_json_statistics”
  • Dynamic diagnostics Python package - "oct.diagnostics.DynamicDiagnostics"
    • Find which state(s) limit the ODE solver step size
    • Get step lengths
    • Get clock time of each step
    • Get information on solver settings
    • List time of events

And a lot of quality improvements - Enjoy!