Graphical environment speeds simulation

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Aug 4, 2003

SansGUI is a modelling and simulation environment for developing and deploying scientific and engineering simulators without the need to write any graphical user interface (GUI) code.

SansGUI is a modelling and simulation environment for developing and deploying scientific and engineering simulators without the need to write any graphical user interface (GUI) code.

Using the latest version of the SansGUI modelling and simulation environment, scientists and engineers can easily combine a schematic editor for building hierarchical network models, graphical user interface for data entry, validation, and simulation controls, and dynamic charting with three-dimensional graphics animation driven by their own simulation code.

Incorporating dynamic 3D graphics for scientific or engineering visualisation and data exploration become a simple task in simulation software development.

A new graphics class supports the industry standard OpenGL application programming interface (API) directly without an additional layer of API functions.

The graphics class provides simulation developers with an application framework that manages multiple 3D graphic windows and interactive user interface features, such as 3D object translation, rotation, zooming, selection, continuous run, single step or fast forward animation controls, printing, exporting image files, and many more.

With this new class, the developers can concentrate on developing the underlying logic and mathematics of their simulation programs that control the graphical objects, rather than spending precious time on learning and programming the GUI details.

The developers use the SansGUI development environment to define the model building blocks and implement their behaviour of domain-specific systems.

The simulation users configure their models from these building blocks, enter model parameters, run simulations, monitor execution progress, examine intermediate and final simulation results to refine their designs in the highly interactive SansGUI run-time environment.

"With the solid foundation built in SansGUI, namely the universal data object format and single API function prototype, we are able to integrate dynamic 3D graphical display into the SansGUI environment seamlessly", said Greg Chien, Principal Software Designer at ProtoDesign.

"All of the run-time user controls, such as step-wise execution and fast-forwarding, are applicable to dynamic charting and 3D graphics.

Some users raised concerns of performance degradation due to the introduction of 3D graphics, or any graphics in general.

Our solution is to let the users decide whether to update graphics windows with a user settable interval, only at the end of a simulation run, or not to update at all by not opening the graphic windows".

This translates into very low or no run-time penalty for computation-intensive applications, and the user has the control over it.

SansGUI supports Microsoft Visual C++ and Compaq Visual Fortran for developing tightly coupled, highly interactive in-process simulators with dynamic 3D graphics.

External process simulators can be written in any programming language or development environment and invoked by a customisable command script.

SansGUI version 1.2 is available immediately on Microsoft Windows platforms.

The SansGUI Professional Edition is priced at US $599 per licence; whereas the Run-Time Edition costs only US $49.

Another key advantage of using SansGUI for simulation development is that there is no royalty fee involved in distributing simulators created with the SansGUI environment.

An educational licence for the Professional Edition costs US $299, and a Student Edition with limited capabilities is available for US $99.

All items can be ordered directly from ProtoDesign's online store.