Tour of the Simulation IDE

The OMNEST Simulation IDE supports all stages of a simulation project: developing, building, configuring and running simulation models, and analyzing results. It also supports visualizing simulation execution traces as sequence charts, and generating documentation. This page is intended to give you a brief overview of the Simulation IDE.

Model Editing

Networks and other components can be edited in the NED (NEtwork Description) editor graphically or in source mode. Changes made in one representation are immediately reflected in the other. The NED language defines the appearance, parameters and connection points of module components (termed modules), and also the submodules and internal connections (netlist). NED has support for parametric topologies, interfaces, inheritance, hierarchical packages and many other language features necessary for creating and working with large model frameworks. The source editor offers live error markers, intelligent Content Assist, Go To Declaration, Inheritance View and other convenience features.

C++ Editing

Simulation components are implemented in C++, using the OMNEST simulation library. OMNEST relies on Eclipse's C/C++ Development Tooling (CDT), one of the finest C++ IDEs in existence, for efficient editing. CDT offers content assist, navigation, code templates, refactoring and many other features. Makefiles and the C++ build are managed automatically, but can be manually tweaked if necessary.

Configuration Editor

Simulation models and the simulation kernel can be configured and parameterized using configuration files. The configuration editor provides a form-based view of all configuration options, grouped by topics. The configuration can also be edited in source mode; changes made in one representation are immediately reflected in the other. Configuration file syntax allows several model parameters to be set together by using wildcard patterns for the parameter's name and location, avoiding repetition and redundancy. It also lets you define parameter studies, that is, multiple runs that iterate over several values of a parameter (or parameters), each repeated N times with different random number seeds. The editor offers live error markers, content assist, informative tooltips, view of the parameterized module tree, and many other useful features.

Graphical Runtime Environment

Simulations can be run under several user interfaces, including a command-line interface for batch execution and a graphical interactive runtime environment. The graphical runtime allows the user to explore the simulation model and stop, resume or single-step execution; animates packet transmissions and other events; displays log messages from model components; allows the user to peek into queues, buffers, state variables and other objects; and provides other useful features.

Sequence Chart

One of the unrivalled features of OMNEST is being able to record the simulation history and visualize it on an interactive sequence chart in the IDE. The sequence chart includes simulation events, messages sent between simulation components and C++ method calls across components. The sequence chart can be zoomed, panned, filtered, etc. The default time-to-coordinate mapping is nonlinear; it compresses very long time gaps and enhances small ones in order to make them fit and remain observable on the finite-size screen. Images can be saved in several formats, including SVG. Special care was taken to ensure that the tool remains useful for large simulation models and log files: chart contents can be filtered in many ways (by modules and module types, event types, message types, time, etc) to reduce the amount of information to be plotted to a manageable volume; compound modules can be collapsed into single axes; various details can be turned on and off. Due to random access and lazy loading, the tool remains useful for file sizes beyond 4GB as well. The sequence chart tool can be invaluable help in tracking down protocol errors, and in showing off and documenting model operation.

Result Analysis

The result analysis tool in the IDE allows you to process and plot simulation results in various ways. Simulation results (scalars, summary statistics, histograms, time series, etc.) are written into result files during execution; these files also record various details about the simulation run, such as the time of execution, and the name of the network and its parameterization. The result analysis tool allows you to select a subset of all result files to work with, and displays their contents organized in various ways. You can filter the result items you are interested in, and plot them. Processing steps such as averaging or smoothing vector data can also be applied before plotting. Data and graphics can be exported in various formats, and the way the plots have been produced (data filter, processing operations, chart type, chart attributes, etc.) can be saved as recipes, which makes it easy to reproduce the same plots after re-running the simulation.

Generating Documentation

The IDE allows you to generate hyperlinked HTML documentation from simulation models and model frameworks. The documentation is generated from the network description (NED) files and their comments much the same way as Javadoc for Java or Doxygen for C++. The documentation will contain network diagrams, inheritance and usage diagrams, and other useful diagrams as well, and includes references to Doxygen-generated C++ documentation of the underlying C++ model code.

Installing 3rd-party Eclipse Software

Since the OMNEST Simulation IDE is a customized Eclipse instance, you can install 3rd-party software into it from the Eclipse Marketplace and other Eclipse plug-in sites with just a few clicks.

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