Hi,
Le 12/04/2016 16:39, Paul Bignier a écrit :
Hello Graham,
Pleased to hear that you're using Xcos, it's always good to have
feedback!
1) Right-clicking a "link" (which you call "signal") pops "Format" and
"Link style" menus which enables you to label/color it as well as
using automatic layouts (also accessible via keyboard shortcuts).
2) When dragging a link from a port, you can click in the diagram at
random points. Those will be "control points" through which the link
will pass regardless of the position of its connecting blocks. You may
play with the demos to check it out.
3) If you want to label ports at the moment, you need to define your
own block and set its graphics.in_label & graphics.out_label in its
interface function (typically, the ones in
modules/scicos_blocks/macros/*).
4) That goes with the 1).
5) I don't understand why you would mask a superblock before designing
it properly. Masks are meant to be created once your block is stable,
so there's something I'm missing here.
For 5) it's quite natural to design a system it a top-down approach
where you consider a subsystem as a black-box first, set up the
requirements for this black box and how it will interact with the system
as a whole, then design, or have designed, the inside of your black box.
This enables a parallel workflow where an integrator can verify the
behaviour and simulate the whole system when all parts are ready. Xcos
is rather bottom-up because of the model verification for simulation
done each time you insert a block.
In a sense, Xcos is more suitted for writing what's inside the black-box
than for designing whole sytems where you typically less constrained by
simulability but want to have a link to requirements, traceability,
verification & validation, tests, costs etc.
This could also be a good idea to have black-box for import of other
models (I think FMU here). You don't have the implementation for a
subsystem but want to consider its input/output.
Hope this helps!
Regars,
Paul
On 04/12/2016 02:30 PM, Graham Bartlett wrote:
I've done quite a lot of work with Matlab and Simulink in previous
jobs. At my new place, I'm checking out Xcos (and hence Scilab) as a
free alternative to Simulink, partly on principle, and partly so our
team aren't constrained by bean-counters telling us how many
development seats we can afford. :)
What's currently bugging me with Xcos is subsystem and signal
labelling, which are fundamental to building a design that's
maintainable. There are a few newbie things I'm trying to work out
with this, none of which I've managed to find in the Xcos tutorials,
help docs, or the wiki. I went looking for a mailing list FAQ but I
didn't see one.
1) The first one should be simple. How do I make signals default to
horizontal instead of rat's-nest (point-to-point)?
2) Perhaps related to that, is it possible to manually drag signals
to where I want them to be laid out? Some time back I used VisSim
(for another example) - that also routed signals automatically, but
it had a "wiring" block which let you direct them via a particular
point. I can't find anything like that in Xcos. Of course I can use
from/goto blocks where the automatic layout doesn't look good, or I
could use unity gains or single-input sum blocks as a hack to force
signals through some point without changing them, but none of that is
really ideal. My rule of thumb is that if the design layout looks
messy or rushed then the thought processes involved probably were
too, and that makes me worried.
3) In Simulink, I can put labels on inputs and outputs. If I've got
a subsystem calculating biquad filter coefficients, say, I can label
the inputs "cornerFreq", "qFactor" and "sampleTime", and the outputs
as "b0/b1/b2/a0/a1/a2". When I drop an instance of that subsystem
into a diagram, those names will appear next to the inputs/outputs.
That makes the design clearer, instead of having to dig into the
subsystem and look for annotion text in there (or worse, figure it
out directly from the design itself). Is there a way to make Xcos
subsystems do this?
4) Simulink lets you put names on signal flows as they come out of an
output. As the signal flow goes through the design, Simulink labels
the signal. Typically you'd give this a variable name. Auto-coding
can then use that variable name, or if you're coding up a design
manually then you can use that name. I can see the "Kalman" demo
doing something like this (or perhaps like point 2, I can't tell),
but I can't find anywhere how those names for flows are set up.
5) Masks. If it's your own block, Simulink lets you look at the
subsystem under the mask. Xcos lets you put a mask on a block, but I
can't then see any way to look at the subsystem under the mask,
except by completely deleting the mask. For us mere mortals whose
designs don't always work first time every time, this could be a
problem.
Thanks folks.
Graham.
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