A major objective of many of today's corporations is reducing time to market for new products. This goal, coupled with the fact that systems are only becoming more complex is driving many engineering organizations to employ the use of virtual prototyping, simulation and control system design software. Unfortunately, despite the promise of these tools, no single dynamic system modeling package allows the engineer to easily prototype all aspects of a complex system; mechanisms, hydraulics, pneumatics, thermodynamics, powertrains and electric drives, digital controllers, state machines and electronics. One solution to this problem is to integrate multiple CAE applications, allowing the end-user to create and manipulate a complete virtual prototype of their entire system.
This paper focuses on the work The Boeing Company has done integrating its dynamic system model, simulation, and control tool set, called EASY5®, with other CAE applications. To date, EASY5 offers integration paths to MATLAB®/SIMULINK®/STATEFLOW®; the MATRIXx® product family; multi-body tools including DADS®, ADAMS® and Pro/MECHANICA®; structural analysis tools like NASTRAN® and ANSYS®; an integrated circuit simulator called VANTAGE®; STATEMATE®; software for finite state modeling; and an automatic code generator tool called BEACON®. To demonstrate this capability, a simulation example will be shown where a SIMULINK® controller model will control an EASY5 plant model comprised of a hydraulic circuit that drives a multi-body mechanism modeled with DADS®, and where all tools will run simultaneously