Joystick and keyboard input

Dashboard, Joystick and keyboard input

The Dashboard allows you to change the signal inputs of the system during simulation in an interactive way. Dedicated control primitives are available such as sliders, knobs, buttons, and steering wheels. See Interactive signal input during simulation for more information on this feature. You can associate each property value of a primitive with a button or an axis of a controller device. This means that you can plug in a piece of controller hardware and change the inputs of your system.

Create an association

The association is made with the property of a primitive that is accessible from the object inspector. Select the Dashboard primitive and right click on the property to Edit input associations.

The Association editor

The Input history widget lists all the detected inputs from connected Joysticks and Keyboards. It helps you to find the correct syntax for the Input expression.   The second widget contains the list of associations defined for the current primitive property. There are four types of association:

• Stateless

• State

• Incremental

• Value

State and stateless associations take the on/off value based on the evaluation of the Input. If mapped to a key, the on value is taken when the key is pressed.

Incremental association will increment the value by the amount value until it reaches the limit. You can use an autorepeat property that will increase the value when the user keeps pressing the button.

Value association is well adapted to axis mapping. It allows you to define which axis to use and to set the min/max values of its extremities. Setting a start value higher than the end value will reverse the axis.

Note

Please note that you can make a copy from the Input history widget and paste it into the Input editor of the association.

Global input action

This action allows you to perform actions on hardware devices. These are applied depending on the Simcenter Amesim context:

• When deactivated using a Joystick and a Keyboard the input action is taken into account only when the Dashboard window is selected.

• When activated using a Joystick or a Keyboard the input action is taken into account whichever window related to Simcenter Amesim is selected.