Article: The visual approach to faster development

Regular readers of this magazine will know how much we like Visual Solutions’ VisSim software.
With an highly intuitive interface that belies its enormous power, this dynamic systems modelling tool has been used in the development from everything from motor controls and drives to communication systems, from Boeing jets to the Segway Human Transporter.

Ready-made VisSim solutions range from an add-in to Mathcad to a rapid prototyper for embedded control systems based on the TI C2000 series DSP.

VisSim itself is now in a new version 5, adding a whole raft of new features, plus tighter, faster operation, to make it even easier to construct, modify and maintain dynamic models of your system.

VisSim adopts the function block approach: you construct your model by ‘wiring’ together multi-level function blocks on your computer screen. That makes it very easy to control the behaviour of your model, change parameters and try different approaches, and include hardware in the loop. The result: faster development of optimised systems while minimising the costs of hardware prototyping.