Introduction

Simulink is an environment for multidomain simulation and Model-Based Design for dynamic and embedded systems. It provides an interactive graphical environment and a customizable set of block libraries that let you design, simulate, implement, and test a variety of time-varying systems, including communications, controls, signal processing, video processing, and image processing. Add-on products extend Simulink software to multiple modeling domains, as well as provide tools for design, implementation, and verification and validation tasks. Simulink is integrated with MATLAB, providing immediate access to an extensive range of tools that let you develop algorithms, analyze and visualize simulations, create batch processing scripts, customize the modeling environment, and define signal, parameter, and test data.

Key Features
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Extensive and expandable libraries of predefined blocks Interactive graphical editor for assembling and managing intuitive block diagrams Ability to manage complex designs by segmenting models into hierarchies of design components Model Explorer to navigate, create, configure, and search all signals, parameters, properties, and generated code associated with your model Application programming interfaces (APIs) that let you connect with other simulation programs and incorporate handwritten code MATLAB Function blocks for bringing MATLAB algorithms into Simulink and embedded system implementations Simulation modes (Normal, Accelerator, and Rapid Accelerator) for running simulations interpretively or at compiled C-code speeds using fixed- or variable-step solvers Graphical debugger and profiler to examine simulation results and then diagnose performance and unexpected behavior in your design Full access to MATLAB for analyzing and visualizing results, customizing the modeling environment, and defining signal, parameter, and test data Model analysis and diagnostics tools to ensure model consistency and identify modeling errors

You can construct a model by assembling design components, each of which could be a separate model.

Creating and Working with Models

With Simulink, you can quickly create, model, and maintain a detailed block diagram of your system using a comprehensive set of predefined blocks. Simulink provides tools for hierarchical modeling, data management, and subsystem customization, making it easy to create concise, accurate representations, regardless of your system's complexity.

Selecting and Customizing Blocks

Simulink software includes an extensive library of functions commonly used in modeling a system. These include:

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Continuous and discrete dynamics blocks, such as Integration and Unit Delay Algorithmic blocks, such as Sum, Product, and Lookup Table Structural blocks, such as Mux, Switch, and Bus Selector You can customize these built-in blocks or create new ones directly in Simulink and place them into your own libraries. Additional blocksets (available separately) extend Simulink with specific functionality for aerospace, communications, radio frequency, signal processing, video and image processing, and other applications. You can model physical systems in Simulink. Simscape, SimDriveline, SimHydraulics, SimMechanics, and SimPowerSystems (all available separately) provide expanded capabilities for modeling physical systems, such as those with mechanical, electrical, and hydraulic components.

Incorporating MATLAB Algorithms and Hand-Written Code

When you incorporate MATLAB code, you can call MATLAB functions for data analysis and visualization. Additionally, Simulink lets you use MATLAB code to design embedded algorithms that can then be deployed through code generation with the rest of your model. You can also incorporate hand-written C, Fortran, and Ada code directly into a model, enabling you to create custom blocks in your model.

Building and Editing Your Model

With Simulink, you build models by dragging and dropping blocks from the library browser onto the graphical editor and connecting them with lines that establish mathematical relationships between the blocks. You can arrange the model by using graphical editing functions, such as copy, paste, undo, align, distribute, and resize.

Options for connecting blocks in Simulink. You can connect blocks manually, by using the mouse, or automatically, by routing lines around intervening blocks and through complex topologies.

The Simulink user interface gives you complete control over what you can see and use onscreen. You can add your commands and submenus to the editor and context menus. You can also disable and hide menus, menu items, and dialog box controls.

Organizing Your Model

Simulink lets you organize your model into clear, manageable levels of hierarchy by using subsystems and model referencing. Subsystems encapsulate a group of blocks and signals in a single block. You can add a custom user interface to a subsystem that hides the subsystem's contents and makes the subsystem appear as an atomic block with its own icon and parameter dialog box.

Creating and Masking Subsystems 2:39 Create hierarchy and modularize system behavior using subsystems.

You can also segment your model into design components to model, simulate, and verify each component independently. Components can be saved as separate models by using model referencing, or as subsystems in a library. They are compatible with configuration management systems, such as CVS and ClearCase, and with any registered source control provider application on Windows platforms.

Explore the value of model referencing for component-based modeling.

You can reuse the design components on multiple projects, easily maintaining audit and revision histories. Organizing your models in this way lets you select the level of detail appropriate to the design task. For example, you can use simple relationships to model high-level specifications and add more detailed relationships as you move toward implementation.

Manage Design Variants

Manage design variants in the same model using reference model variants and variant subsystems. This capability simplifies the creation and management of designs that share components, as one model can represent a family of designs.
Manage variants of a design and use data-driven conditions to switch between them.

Conditionally Executed Subsystems

Conditionally executed subsystems let you change system dynamics by enabling or disabling specific sections of your design via controlling logic signals. Simulink lets you create control signals that can enable or trigger the execution of the subsystem based on specific time or events. Logic blocks let you model simple commands to control enabled or triggered subsystems. You can include more complex control logic, as well as model state machines, with Stateflow (available separately).