Article: VisSim makes the link in automation engineering

A new add-on module for VisSim, the world’s leading software for the modelling and simulation of complex dynamic systems, will be of great interest to automation engineers. The new VisSim OPC Server module will enable VisSim to connect to plant control systems via a standard OPC server, and will enhance the software’s applicability in applications such as tuning controllers offline, modelling process behaviour and validating models.

Existing VisSim add-ons include VisSim/Analyze, for performing a frequency domain analysis; and VisSim/C-Code, which produces C-Code from a VisSim diagram. VisSim/Fixed Point lets you easily simulate the behaviour of fixed-point algorithms prior to code generation and implementation of the algorithm on fixed-point hardware; and VisSim/ NeuralNet handles nonlinear system identification, problem diagnosis, decision making, prediction, and other problems where pattern recognition is important on fixed-point hardware.

VisSim/ModelWizard helps develop high fidelity, dynamic models of process plant subsystems or components from real-time plant and historic data; and VisSim/ OptimizePRO calculates optimal values for design variables subject to user-defined constraints starting form initial user guess values.

VisSim/RealTimePRO provides the ability to connect a VisSim system model directly to the external world through digital and analogue I/O, allowing hardware-in-the-loop systems to be created by interfacing VisSim plant or controller models to real-world hardware.