ADAMS/Controls  

 

What's New

The primary focus for release 2003 of ADAMS/Controls has been improvements in infrastructure and quality. Here are some of the new things we have to offer:

Auto-plugin capability

The new Plugin Manager that was added for the 2003 release impacts how ADAMS/Controls is loaded. The Plugin Manager allows you to select all of the plugins you want to load or unload at one time. You have the choice of loading plugins for just a single session or every time, automatically, at startup. The Plugin Manager is accessed from the Tools menu.

See the What's New for ADAMS/View or ADAMS/Car for additional details.

Support for more recent versions of MATLAB and MSC.EASY5

ADAMS/Controls is now compatible with the latest versions of MATLAB and MSC.EASY5. You can now use ADAMS/Controls with MATLAB 6.5 and MSC.EASY5 7.0 and 7.1.

Support for RTW design parameters in ADAMS/Insight

You can now expose design parameters embedded in Real Time Workshop (RTW) code imported into the MSC.ADAMS simulation environment using the Control System Import functionality. Therefore, if you are using ADAMS/Insight, you can now incorporate RTW design parameters into the set of design parameters considered when performing Design of Experiment (DOE) studies.

Performance improvement for function evaluation

You should see enhanced performance when using function evaluation mode. The amount of speed improvement varies, depending on the characteristics of the model. In one MSC.EASY5 example we saw a factor of eight improvement (that is, eight times as fast), although typical models are likely to see less drastic speed changes. As a rule of thumb, the less stiff the model, the greater the increase in performance you can expect.

Streamlined process for Control System Import

Previously, you had the capability of importing controls systems from MATLAB using code generated by MATLAB RTW. At that time, part of the build process required you to manually copy files out of the MATLAB installation. Now, the MSC.ADAMS script can find these files automatically, provided you have set the environment variable MATLAB_ROOT to be the MATLAB installation directory path.

Also, it is easier to transport files from machine to machine. This is because all that is needed is the RTW DLL (the presence of the RTW object file (.obj) is no longer required).

Note: New Control System Import capability is being introduced for MSC.EASY5 users (see "Code import from MSC.EASY5" below).

Online help

When you load the ADAMS/Controls plugin, a new menu option labelled ADAMS/Controls Help, appears under Help. Also, selecting F1 in any of the ADAMS/Controls dialog boxes displays the online help for that feature.

Code import from MSC.EASY5
(this capability is only available for Beta testing)

General systems modeled in MSC.EASY5 version 7.1 can now be imported into ADAMS/Controls using the Control System Import feature. This is achieved by using MSC.EASY5 External Function Evaluation (XFE) code.

For documentation and more information please see the MSC.ADAMS Knowledge Base Article 10507. Further details about the final release of this capability will also be provided in the as it becomes available.
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Changes

37343
Installation improvements for MSC.EASY5.
Previously, the installation of the MSC.EASY5 extension for MSC.ADAMS was sensitive to the order the applications were installed and whether or not multiple versions of either program was present. With this release, the installation process has been improved to avoid these problems.

30684
Removed the limitation that was preventing the Control System Import utility from creating the MSC.ADAMS dll when the Simulink model had no internal states (either continuous or discrete). Now you can import such controllers that are without dynamics.

31432
Modified behavior of linear plant export feature so that the .acf file is no longer created for either control systems design package. This .acf was seldom used and was found to be a source of confusion.

35983
Example files for ADAMS/Controls have been updated to have consistent s-functions which are up-to-date for version 2003.

36259
The manual mode of initialization commands for the MSC.ADAMS plant s-function mask was removed in version 12.0. This is a reminder for those that may have overlooked this change in the previous release. Please note that in version 2003, the automatic mode of initialization continues to be used.

36399
Documentation is now available in the MSC.EASY5 tutorial explaining the OUT_RAT parameter. This should minimize any confusion with "Time Increment" on the Simulation Data.

36830 and 36831
Documentation is now available explaining what to do if you should have a missing .bat file when using Control System Import. This may occur if you work with a Simulink model containing discrete states. Other issues when using discrete states are also documented.

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Issues resolved

During the course of 2003 release development, many maintenance and support issues have been resolved. The list below illustrates some of the key issues that are resolved. Contact your local MSC.ADAMS support provider for determining the status of other specific issues.

Items resolved in the 12.0 Service Pack

The 2003 release of ADAMS/Controls includes all of the fixes and enhancements that were provided in the 12.0 Service Pack. See ADAMS/Controls 12.0 Service Pack, APN-120-187. These resolved items are:

26959
The MSC.ADAMS variable names now carry through and are visible in the MSC.ADAMS block in MSC.EASY5. Note that this change requires that the MSC.ADAMS block in previously generated models be reconnected within MSC.EASY5.

29512
The number of states is now contained in the .inf file outputted during the plant export. This means that the number of states no longer has to be entered by hand when interfacing ADAMS/Controls with MSC.EASY5. Note, however, that if an old .inf file is used (that is, an .inf file generated with a "pre service pack" version of ADAMS/Controls), you will still be prompted to enter the number of states manually.

30587 and 31716
Scripts are now included to simplify some aspects of exporting control systems from MATLAB using RTW and compiling into libraries that can be imported into MSC.ADAMS. Be sure to review the instructions contained in the ADAMS/Controls online help for details on how to use these scripts.

30271
A problem with the MSC.EASY5 interface specific to the IBM platform has been resolved. This problem previously manifested itself as a compilation failure when the MSC.EASY5 executable was built.

30406
In the ADAMS/Control-MATLAB integration, if certain blocks (known ones are RAMP, CHIRTP and SATURATION) were directly linked to the import of an MSC.ADAMS block, an incorrect output value may have been wrongly passed to the MSC.ADAMS block. This has been fixed.

30537
Previously, if you saved a model to a binary file from the ADAMS/Controls plugin and then loaded that file into another ADAMS/View session, the M file created in this new session had no search path information. This caused problems when executing a co-simulation from Simulink, since the path to the ADAMS/Controls directory was missing. This has been resolved.

30871
ADAMS/Controls Co-simulation enables you to specify commands to initialize the MSC.ADAMS model before dynamic simulation. Previously, there was inconsistency in how these initialization commands were handled between batch and interactive simulation modes. As a result they were being ignored in the interactive mode. This issue has been resolved.

32688
Support for Control System Import with ADAMS/Car has been improved.

32205
A problem with Control System Import specific to Windows 2000 has been resolved.

32469
An issue with the Control System Import dialog box that appeared on some Windows machines has been resolved. This problem manifested itself as input fields that could not be resized, and the OK, Apply, and Cancel buttons were not displayed.

32733
Previously, if an ADAMS/Controls-MSC.EASY5 simulation was stopped before it completed execution on a Windows machine, another run was not possible without rebooting the computer. This has been resolved.

Additional items resolved

29667
Updated M-file so the MEX extension is unloaded automatically when a simulation finishes in Simulink.

29703
Corrected problem that was preventing ADAMS/Rail from using the proper executable when performing Plant Export. The .m file will now point to arailsolver rather than acarsolver.

31365 and 31366
Fixed problems that complicated the Windows installation of the MSC.EASY5 – MSC.ADAMS extension.

31718
Removed limitation in Control System Import that was preventing simulation of sampled systems with discrete states.

35981
Fixed problem that was corrupting .res file when the "Number of communications per output step" was changed back to 1 after prior use of other values.

36488
Fixed problem affecting Control System Import that was preventing the use of Simulink models that contain lookup tables.

37162
Corrected problem with ADAMS/Controls plugin that was preventing the return of license when unloaded.

37331 and 30406
Fixed problem of input variables not being set correctly on UNIX when using MATLAB 6.1. Note that concession patches can be made available for ADAMS/Controls 11.0 and 12.0 if needed.

37534
Corrected problem that caused MSC.ADAMS plants with multiple inputs to be incorrect on the MSC.ADAMS side in Simulink when using HP-UX 11.0.

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Known issues

Please go to the Knowledge Base to read all of the Known Issues for ADAMS/Controls 2003

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Copyright © 2003 MSC.Software Corporation. All rights reserved.

Revised: 09/06/05