A Library and Scripting Language for Tool Independent Simulation Descriptions

Abstract

In modeling and simulation it is often necessary to simulate a model with a variety of settings and evaluate the simulation results with measured data or previously acquired results. As doing this manually is error-prone and ineffective, scripting languages are often used to automate this process. In general a simulation description is tool and model dependent. Therefore, simulating the same model with the same simulation description in different simulation tools or comparing two different models with the same settings is often not easily achieved. We propose an object-oriented, tool-independent, easy-to-use, domain-specific scripting language to describe simulations in an exchangeable and uniform manner. Through this simulation description the simulation settings and the simulation environment can easily be changed while syntax and sequence of commands remain the same. The language is Python based and is designed to be simple, well-readable and intuitive even with marginal programming experience while maintaining Pythons’ strength. The language uses an in-house Python library which provides interfaces to different simulation environments (so far Dymola, OpenModelica, Simulink). This library can also be used directly in Python, enabling experienced Python users to keep describing their simulations in Python but benefiting from our efforts to achieve tool-independence.