Mechanical Models Translation, Simulation and Visualization in Modelica

Modeling and simulation have become central to all disciplines of engineering and science. In a comprehensive modeling and simulation environment, it is desirable to integrate models specified in different modeling formalisms and to extend modeling language constructs to support multi-domain and multi-formalism modeling integrated with powerful visualization capabilities. This paper is concerned with the design of a complete integrated environment that combines the powerful mechanical model design of various CAD packages with the structuring mechanisms of object oriented modeling languages including a mathematical and logical behavior representation. We present an integrated environment for simulation of multi-domain models which has been implemented using Modelica as a standard model representation. The user can work with mechanical models designed with AutoDesk’s Mechanical Desktop, extend the corresponding Modelica model in various ways, and analyze the simulation results in a high performance interactive visualization environment.