Editor’s Pick: Maplesoft Releases MapleSim 5

By DE Editors

Dear Desktop Engineering Reader:

Word association test: Maplesoft. Who thought Maple? Raise your hand.

That makes sense. Maple is a powerful symbolic computation engine—really, it’s a gold standard. Still, in a growing number of engineering environments, people thought “MapleSim.” That makes sense too. MapleSim has proven itself vital to engineering enterprises. Maplesoft released version 5 of MapleSim recently. It has a load of goodies that make it an important release.

MapleSim, in its briefest description, is physical modeling and simulation software. It lets you leverage a symbolic modeling engine to handle the complex mathematics used to develop models in such areas as multi-domain systems, plant modeling, and control design. Capabilities include automatically generated model equations in full parametric form, equation-based custom components, optimized code generation for real-time systems, multibody technology, and an interactive analysis environment.

The first item of interest is that MapleSim 5 has what Maplesoft calls a “broader application scope” and, cheek to jowl with that, greater simulation efficiency. What does that mean? To start, two new component libraries: One for modeling electromagnetic devices like solenoids, saturating transformers, and motors; the second for modeling thermal fluids like heat loss in pipes. In all, MapleSim 5 has been expanded with 150 new components covering all sorts of applications.

Simulation efficiency: The coolest example of this is enhanced diagnostic tools. Now, these tools give you feedback on your model definition early in its development. But, instead of just beeping at you, MapleSim helps you fix problems before they subvert your simulation later on.

MapleSim 5 also offers better control over over parameters and export of 3D animation simulation results. Its design environment for building model diagrams and 3D model representations has been streamlined. You can now develop custom analysis templates so that you can jump-start studies.

There’s a bunch more: new connectors for linking MapleSim models with dSPACE and improvements to the connectors for Simulink, LabVIEW, and NI VeriStand, for example. Lots of this is detailed in today’s Pick of the Week, but, frankly, there is a ton of stuff to learn about MapleSim 5. Your best bet is to hit the link at the end of the main text and go to MapleSim on the Maplesoft website. Watch the video (3 minutes) for an intro to this system. Next, you might like to hit the link at the end of the DE write-up to sign up for a demo unit. Then you’ll really know why many engineers think MapleSim when they hear the name Maplesoft.

Thanks, pal.—Lockwood

Anthony J. Lockwood
Editor at Large, Desktop Engineering

Read today’s Pick of the Week write-up.

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