ADAMS/Controls Release Notes

TCP/IP-based communication

This release introduces TCP/IP as a new communication mechanism for ADAMS/Controls. Previous releases used pipes for communication which, although relatively fast, had some limitations. For example, pipes could not support communication between dissimilar machines and were sometimes unreliable.

Now, with TCP/IP, you can have ADAMS/Controls running on one machine and your controls application (for example, MATLAB or MSC.EASY5) running on a different machine, elsewhere on your network.

The Python-based utility (adams_server.py) is used for starting MSC.ADAMS as a server and establishing the TCP/IP-based communication. The utility can be found in the controls/utils subdirectory of your ADAMS/Controls installation directory.

The following example, starts the MSC.ADAMS server on port 35999 of a Windows machine using all other needed information from the MSC.EASY5 information file, antenna.inf:

adams05 python adams_server -f antenna.inf -p 35999

All available options can be displayed by issuing the command:

adams05 python adams_server.py -h

For more details, refer to Appendix A in the guide, Getting Started Using ADAMS/Controls.

Note: To configure the client, you will need an MSC.ADAMS installation on both sides. In a future release we will be looking to provide a dedicated client package that will have a smaller footprint.

For an example, see Knowledge Base Article 1-KB12271.

First-order interpolation

The data exchange scheme for co-simulation has been enhanced to allow for first-order interpolation. The scheme of prior releases could be described as using a zero-order hold (plant inputs are held constant while control states are updated), which can be hard on the integrator since they change discontinuously. A first-order hold can overcome this disadvantage. Since integrators can take larger steps with higher-order holds, the simulation speed for many applications should improve measurably.

Note that linear interpolation is also being used in MSC.EASY5. We expect that the interpolation schemes may give slightly different answers than a lower-order interpolation.

For an example, see Knowledge Base Article 1-KB12410.

ADAMS/Controls support in C++ Solver

You now have the choice of using either the FORTRAN or C++ version of ADAMS/Solver when running ADAMS/Controls. The selection of solver can be made on the Plant Export dialog box and will subsequently appear on the Matlab plant mask or inside the MSC.EASY5 component data table (CDT). This means that the advantages of the C++ solver (GCON constraint, adaptive Jacobian, planar part, 2nd order integrators, and so on) are now available to users of ADAMS/Controls.

For an example, see Knowledge Base Article 1-KB12269.

Code import from MSC.EASY5 with parameter and request support

MSC.EASY5 parameters and requests can now be easily exchanged through the ADAMS External Systems Library (ESL) interface.

Note: To use the parameter/request export feature you must have the MSC.EASY5 2004.1 release.

General systems modeled in MSC.EASY5 may be exported as a DLL and brought into ADAMS/Controls using the Control System Import feature. This is achieved through MSC.EASY5 External Systems Library (ESL) code. Initially introduced in the ADAMS/Controls 2003 Service Pack, the feature has now been extended.

MSC.EASY5 parameters and requests can now be shared with MSC.ADAMS 2005 so you can perform design studies, DOE, and optimization studies. This improvement reduces the need to switch between MSC.EASY5 and MSC.ADAMS when trying to improve your system model behavior. The exported MSC.EASY5 parameters will appear in ADAMS/View as design variables. The MSC.EASY5 results may be passed in as output requests, so that you can create objective functions or constraints based on MSC.EASY5 result set components.

For more information, see the guide, Getting Started Using ADAMS/Controls.

For an example, see Knowledge Base Article 1-KB12270.

Support for MSC.EASY5 2004.1 and MATLAB R14

This release of ADAMS/Controls is certified to run with the 2004.1 release of MSC.EASY5.

The supported versions of MATLAB are R14 (MATLAB 7, Simulink 6) and R13.1 (MATLAB 6.5.1, Simulink 5.1.1). Older MATLAB versions (like 6.5 and 6.1), although they have been tested and are working, are not officially supported with ADAMS/Controls 2005.

Note regarding MATLAB R14 platform support:

• ADAMS/Controls 2005 is not currently compatible with MATLAB R14 on the HP-UX platform.
• IBM and HP-Itanium (IA64) platforms are not supported by MATLAB R14. This link details the R14 platforms and compatibility, http://www.mathworks.com/support/sysreq/current_release/unix.html.

If you want to co-simulate with MATLAB and you are running ADAMS/Controls on one of the platforms that is not supported by MATLAB, you should consider using TCP/IP communication. This allows ADAMS/Controls to communicate with MATLAB even though the codes are running on different platforms.

Documentation Enhancements

ADAMS/Controls Documentation Improvements

Improved documentation as follows:

• Updated MSC.ADAMS Extension for MSC.EASY5 installation procedure
• Updated the online help and the guide, Getting Started Using ADAMS/Controls to reflect other changes made to the product.

Overall Documentation Improvements

For MSC.ADAMS 2005, we've made improvements to the MSC.ADAMS help:

• Added global search so you can search across the entire set of MSC.ADAMS help. To access the global search, do one of the following:

  • At the top of the help, select Switch Products, and then select the Search tab.

  • In any product, select the Search tab, and then in the window that appears, select Global Search.

  Note that the global search does not include any .pdfs (including getting started guides and ADAMS/Driver).

• Removed any hardcoding of font sizes so you can scale the text of the help to any size. Please note that many of the equations do not scale because they are images, and the help looks the best when viewed with medium (or 100%). In addition, your browser will print the text the same size as it is displayed.

• Documented many of the environment variables for the products to help customize your session. The environment variables are for ADAMS/Controls, ADAMS/Durability, ADAMS/Flex, ADAMS/Solver, ADAMS/View, and the template-based products (ADAMS/Aircraft, ADAMS/Car, ADAMS/Driveline, ADAMS/Rail). For more information, see the Running and Configuring help.

Controls licensing rearranged

The licensing for ADAMS/Controls has been changed so that all graphical user interface (GUI) operations are now unlicensed, and only the solutions using ADAMS/Solver are licensed. This means that you or your colleagues may export MSC.ADAMS plant models, import general systems DLLs, or perform other GUI operations without checking out an ADAMS/Controls license. This simplifies the sharing of models and fosters collaboration across the engineering enterprise. License checking for ADAMS/Controls occurs when the controls model is being solved at run-time. This happens for function evaluation, cosimulation, and models containing DLLs imported from MSC.EASY5 External Systems Library (ESL) or MATLAB RealTime Workshop.

The 2005 release of ADAMS/Controls includes all of the fixes and enhancements that were provided in the 2003 Service Pack. See ADAMS/Controls 2003 Service Pack, APN-130-256. The resolved items are:

40237, 40795

A problem that was causing unexpectedly noisy results in some models when using CO-simulation has been corrected.

41961

Fixed problem in communication pipe that was causing function evaluation (vcontrols) to run very slowly.

42070

Updated the adams_ext.py for MSC.EASY5 so that it works with models containing feedthrough.

42037

There was a problem running ADAMS/Controls with models containing CONTACT and CURVE statements. Batch mode co-simulations of curve-based contact models were not working as they should. Corrections have been made so that this is no longer a problem.

42071, 43735

Enhanced the Controls System Import dialog box so that it filters on file extensions (.dll, .sl, .so) when browsing for the external system library file.

42435

Corrected problem that could lead to an application crash when co-simulating models containing contacts and using vcontrols.

42593

Enhanced Control System Import feature so you can establish initial conditions from imported continuous systems.

42594

Enhanced Control System Import feature so imported control systems containing continuous states may have their states reset on demand by RTW/Simulink or EASY5/XFE.

42835

Solid-to-solid contact models would not work properly during batch CO-simulation due to a bug involving Parasolid export (42541). This issue has been resolved in the prerequisite ADAMS/View service pack, so the ADAMS/Controls issue is also resolved.

43093

Implemented GSE interface changes to better support ADAMS/Controls import of RTW/Simulink models containing continuous states.

43344

Implemented scheduling improvements for discrete GSE elements used for the integration of ADAMS/Chassis and ADAMS/Controls.

44029

Corrected error in ADAMS/Solver that caused exhaustion of OPRM memory space. This issue was affecting ADAMS/Car models that were running ADAMS/Controls in CO-simulation mode; the problem has been resolved in the prerequisite ADAMS/Solver service pack.

44197

Resolved the problem that was causing a slow start up of function evaluation mode with MSC.EASY5 when using vcontrols. The default delay in start-up has now been reduced to four seconds. In some circumstances, this default might be too short, leading to problems starting vcontrols. You may override the default using the ADAMS_CONTROLS_WTIME environment variable.

To set the launch time to 10 seconds:

On Windows: set ADAMS_CONTROLS_WTIME=10
On UNIX: setenv ADAMS_CONTROLS_WTIME 10

44248, 43902

Updated the GSE interface with additional flags to pass information about initialization and end of simulation. This was implemented for ADAMS/Chassis.

44249, 44120

Fixed the problem in the GSE interface that was causing redundant calls during initial conditions (IC) analysis.

44305, 47394

Updated the plant export interface so that the Parasolid files generated for contact models are compatible not only for the solver simulations but also for ADAMS/View use.

46216

Updated controls system delete so that it deletes objects it used to leave behind, such as IC array and sensor elements.

46653

Updated control system import dialog box so that its fields will expand when the dialog box is widened, allowing better visibility of longer path/file names.

47298

Corrected initialization problem that was causing different results between internal solver and external solver when using an imported MATLAB RTW dll.

Copyright © 2004 MSC.Software Corporation. All rights reserved.