ABB

ABB Forschungszentrum, Heidelberg, Germany (ABB Research Center)


Click here to get the complete story. (pdf)

Electrical Engineering and Network Simulation

Application
Worldwide Networked Simulation Systems

ArcStyler, Rational Rose

Fewer programmers and test engineers are required for development and maintenance of the test environment as a result of the generation of consistent and high-quality code, shorter software development cycles, independence of component architectures due to decoupling of model and implementation, concentration on the solution of the electrical engineering problems, no time wasted on IT implementation details

The application was designed for the simulation of electromagnetic effects with the help of complex 3D models of transformers, switchgear and other equipment in order to reduce the efforts involved in testing prototypes. The simulation systems for virtual prototypes themselves are highly complex. Therefore, ABB placed great importance on the reusability of the electrical engineering knowhow that had to go into these systems. For this reason, ABB opted for an MDA approach as the underlying architecture and for ArcStyler as the development platform.

The entire system logic was modeled at a level independent of the implementation platform. This assures that this valuable asset can be resued for future extensions of the system as well as for other applications.

The platform-specific technical details were added in several steps of model refinement. These model-to-model transformations were followed by fully automatic model-to-code transformations. ABB used a Java2 Cartridge as the generator engine. This cartridge was extended RMI aspects accounting for attributes, associations and inheritance.