Why Choose MapleSim for your System-Level Modeling Projects – Maplesoft

Why Choose MapleSim for your System-Level Modeling Projects




System-level modeling is an extremely effective approach for engineering design projects that can help you reduce development time, uncover problems early in the development cycle, and improve overall designs. However, not every company that adopts this approach succeeds in achieving these benefits because they find it too difficult translate their engineering expertise into their system-leveling modeling tool. With MapleSim, you get an environment that helps you capture, deepen, preserve, and leverage your engineering knowledge so you can truly reap the rewards of system-level modeling and simulation, and create better products, faster.


Capture Knowledge

The Challenge: It's not always easy to tell your modeling software the things you already know about your system. Component libraries rarely have the perfect assumptions for your project. Sometimes they offer too little fidelity, missing dynamics you need to capture. Sometimes they provide too much, forcing you to pick values for parameters you don't have or don't understand, so you end up with incorrect results because of parameters you don't care about.  

The MapleSim Solution: With MapleSim, you can easily map your engineering knowledge onto components and models.

  • Custom components are easily created by providing, or even deriving, the underlying mathematical equations that determine their behavior.
  • The underlying equations that govern any component are accessible, so you can determine exactly how an unknown parameter is used.
  • MapleSim does not force you to provide initial conditions for all parameters, it clearly communicates what happens when values are not specified, and it assists you with picking appropriate initial values.

Deepen Knowledge

The Challenge: It can be difficult, or even impossible, to perform the analysis you want. Modeling tools generally come with standard analysis tools, but if you want to move beyond the standard techniques, or even simply combine standard tools in an automated way, you will often find that your ability to increase your understanding of your system is limited not by your abilities, but by your tool.

The MapleSim Solution: MapleSim provides both standard analysis tools and a flexible environment for customizing your analysis. You can explore your design as deeply as you wish to gain greater insight into system behavior and improve your design.

  • Built-in tools make it easy to apply standard analysis techniques, such as sensitivity analysis, Monte Carlo simulation, parameter sweeps, and optimization.
  • You can perform complicated operations at the click of a button or using a single command, including symbolic differentiation, symbolic integration, order reduction, variable isolation, and analytical solving of sets of equations.
  • A powerful, math-aware programming language is available for developing customized analyses, such as inverse kinematics, vibration analysis, and much more.

Preserve Knowledge

The Challenge:  You don't just need the final model, you need the assumptions behind the model. A lot of thinking goes into any engineering design, such as the reasoning behind certain decisions, and the assumptions the design is based on. Sometimes this knowledge is stored in a binder, sometimes it exists only in the engineer's brain. When the binder is misplaced or the engineer leaves the project, the person who takes over is left with a model, and no idea why it was built the way it was. Without that information, making changes to the model is difficult. What's worse, it's risky, since the changes could invalidate one of the underlying assumptions without anyone realizing it, and so produce a flawed design or incorrect results.

The MapleSim Solution: The knowledge embedded in your MapleSim components and models is always accessible and comprehensible to other engineers, whether it's needed next week or next year.

  • All component definitions and model equations are accessible, for both built-in and custom created elements.
  • When it is necessary to view a component's underlying code, intelligent tools help give you a complete view of the elements that define the component.
  • Analyses, optimization investigations, and custom component definitions can include explanations, images, data files, and mathematical derivations. As a result, the thinking behind the component or model is always available, not just the final parameter value or plot.
  • Models, simulation results, analysis, reports, custom component descriptions, animations, data files, and more are all kept in a single project file so the reasoning cannot become separated from the model.

Leverage Knowledge

The Challenge:  Your model can provide answers to many questions, but those answers are often inaccessible. Usually it requires an expert in the use of the modeling tool to ask the questions. This can mean that fewer people get to ask questions, and the rest do without answers that could have been obtained from the model. Or it can mean that expensive engineers spend less time doing modeling because they are spending their time answering questions for other people. In addition, often the answers embedded in the model need to be provided to another tool in your toolchain, which can require additional work to move the knowledge from one tool to another.

The MapleSim Solution: Whether you want to provide easy access to solutions derived from your MapleSim model throughout your organization, or integrate your model with the rest of your toolchain, MapleSim makes sure the results of your hard work are always accessible.

  • You can create easy-to-use web applications that provide simplified interfaces to your MapleSim model, so people in your organization can get the answers they need, when they need them, using only a web browser.
  • MapleSim provides easy connectivity to Simulink®, FMI-compliant modeling tools, CAD tools, and more.
  • Royalty-free, callback-free code generation makes it simple and cost-effective to export your model to other tools.