OpenModelica 1.11.0 Release

OpenModelica 1.11.0 Release and MODPROD & OpenModelica workshops

OPENMODELICA IS AN OPEN-SOURCE Modelica-based cyber-physical mathematical modeling, architectural description and simulation environment intended for industrial and academic usage. Its long-term development is supported by a non-profit organization - the Open Source Modelica Consortium (OSMC). For download, see www.openmodelica.org. Regarding the new OpenModelica 1.11.0 Release, see further below.

This post contains two news items about modeling simulation and model-based product development:

• The OpenModelica 1.11.0 Beta3 release, a powerful Modelica-based modeling, simulation and visualization tool for multiple application areas. Download from www.openmodelica.org where you also find more info about the release. See also further below about the main enhancements of this release.
• Call for participation of the MODPROD and OpenModelica workshops on model-based product development and modeling/simulation technology and applications. February 6-8, 2017. For more details and the preliminary program, see www.modprod.liu.se NOTE: Lower fee for registration latest January 27.

Keynotes for MODPROD'2017 Workshop:

• Osten Franberg, Initiator of the Swedish Vinnova SIP programme for Internet-of-Things. "Internet-of-Things Potential, Modeling, Architecture, and Standardization"
• Michael Wetter, Leader of Building Energy Projects at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA, "The Role of Modelica, FMI, and Model-Based Development for Low Energy Building and Community Energy Systems - Progress and Challenges"
• Conrad Bock, Leader of Systems Analysis Integration at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology, USA. "New SysML Extension for Physical Interaction and Signal Flow Simulation Standard"
• Per Hammarstrom, Saab, "Software Architectures, Variant Handling, Feature Modeling"

Six tutorials covering subjects such as:

Modelica, modeling, simulation, and optimization
Building system modeling with Modelica
FMI and co-simulation
FMI and Papyrus
Tools and models for power system modeling, simulation, calibration
SysML

Summary of most important improvements in the OpenModelica 1.11.0 release:

• Dramatically improved compilation speed and performance, in particular for large models.
• 3D animation visualization of regular MSL MultiBody simulations and for real-time FMUs.
• Better support for synchronous and state machine language elements, now supports 90% of the clocked synchronous library.
• Several OMEdit improvements including folding of large annotations.
• 64-bit OM on Windows further stabilized
• Integration of Sundials/IDA DAE solver with potentially large increase of simulation performance for large models with sparse structure.
• Improved library coverage.
• Parameter sensitivity analysis added to OpenModelica.
• An online step-by-step Modelica introduction spoken-tutorial using OpenModelica (see link from www.openmodelica.org )

OpenModelica Compiler (OMC)

• Dramatically improved compilation speed and dramatically reduced memory requirements for very large models. In Nov 2015, the largest power generation and transmission system model that OMC could handle had 60000 equations and it took 700 seconds to generate the simulation executable code; it now takes only 45 seconds to do so with OMC 1.11.0, which can also handle a model 10 times bigger (600 000 equations) in less than 15 minutes and with less than 32 GB of RAM. Simulation times are comparable to domain-specific simulation tools.
• Improved library coverage.
• Better support for synchronous and state machine language elements, now simulates 90% of the clocked synchronous library.
• Enhanced Cpp runtime to support the PowerSystems library.
• Integration of Sundials/IDA solver as an alternative to DASSL.
• A DAEMode solver mode was added, which allows to use the sparse IDA solver to handle the DAEs directly. This can lead to substantially faster simulation on large systems with sparse structure, compared to the traditional approach.
• The direct sparse solvers KLU and SuperLU have been added, with benefits for models with large algebraic loops.
• Multi-parameter sensitivity analysis added to OMC.
• Library replaceable support in OMC coupled to OMEdit GUI. (Available in the Beta2 version)
• Progress on more efficient inline function mechanism.
• Stabilized 64-bit Windows support.
• Performance improvement of parameter evaluation.
• Enhanced tearing support, with prefer iteration variables and user-defined tearing.
• Support for external object aliases in connectors and equations (a non-standard Modelica extension).

Graphic Editor OMEdit

• Significantly faster browsing of most libraries.
• Several GUI improvements including folding of multi-line annotations.
• Further improved code formatting preservation during edits.
• GUI for replaceable library support. (Will be available in the Beta2 version)
• Support for all simulation logging flags.
• Select and export variables after simulation.
• Support for Byte Order Mark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte_order_mark
  • Added support enables other tools to correctly read the binary files written by OMEdit.
• Save files with line endings according to OS (Windows (CRLF), Unix (LF)).
• Support of multi platforms FMUs.
• Support of DisplayUnit and unit conversion.
• Fixed automatic save.
• Added OMEdit support for FMU cross compilation. This makes it possible to launch OMEdit on a remote or virtual Linux machine using a Windows X server and export an FMU with Windows binaries.
• Initial support for DynamicSelect in model diagrams (texts and visible attribute after simulation, no expressions yet).
• An HTML documentation editor. (Will be available in the Beta2 version)
• Improved logging in OMEdit of structured messages and standard output streams for simulations.

FMI Support

• Cross compilation of C++ FMU export. Compared to the C runtime, the C++ cross compilation covers the whole runtime for model exchange.
• Improved Newton solver for C++ FMUs (scaling and step size control).

Other things

• 3D animation visualization of regular MSL MultiBody simulations and for real-time FMUs.
• An updated OMDev (OpenModelica Development Environment), involving msys2. This was needed for the shift to 64-bit on Windows.
• OMWebbook - a web version of OMNotebook online, http://omwebbook.openmodelica.org/ Also, a script is available to convert an OMNotebook to an OMWebbook.
• A Jupyter notebook Modelica mode, available in OpenModelica.