Troubleshooting

troubleshooting

Since creating and running a real-time model is a process that involves several software and many stages there are unfortunately plenty of opportunity for problems. It is probably useful to repeat that one should ensure that the real-time environment is configured correctly before adding an Simcenter Amesim model. It is therefore a good idea to at least run through the tutorial examples given in the Users Guide for the real-time environment before attempting to interface with Simcenter Amesim.

Since it is difficult or impossible to debug on the real-time target you should also ensure that the complete model (Simcenter Amesim + Simulink) works fine on the host PC in Simulink before downloading to the target computer. It is not useful to start troubleshooting on the real-time target before the model runs without problems in Simulink.

But even if the model runs fine under Simulink there are several major differences between running on the host PC and running on the target PC. These differences are quite often the source for problems and you should start investigating them.

• User written data files

  As explained earlier there is (normally) no access to files on the real-time target computer. All data must therefore be encoded into the actual executable. The data-file formats supported are discussed in the An example using external data files section of this manual. It is also important that the filenames are accessible as text-parameters.

• If a submodel uses data-files with names that does not exist as text parameters the code-generation can be aided by specifying the names of the data-files as global text-parameters.

• Data-files created by Simcenter Amesim

  As explained earlier the files normally used by the simulation model needs to be recreated for every change in the Simcenter Amesim model (using Generate files for Real-Time). If submodels are removed, added or changed in the Simcenter Amesim system without doing a Generate files for Real-Time the result is quite often a reboot or crash of the real-time system. Any parameter changes in the Simcenter Amesim model should be followed by a Generate files for Real-Time and a Simulink Coder™ (or Real-Time Workshop®) build if the new values is to be taken into account on the real-time target.