Introduction to ESL-Studio

ESL-Studio is an integrated development environment for creating ESL simulations using block diagrams and ESL source code. It is an alternative to, and replacement for, ESL's older Integrated Simulation Environment (ISE). It may be used with either ESL-Pro or ESL-Lite.

Using ESL-Studio's graphical user interface you can manage each stage of the simulation activity.

ESL-Studio provides the following facilities:

• Multi-window graphical block diagram editor for model construction.
• Inclusion of ESL coded submodels where appropriate.
• Interactive control of simulation execution (via the ESL-SEC program) with run-time graph plotting.
• Display manager with post-run graph plotting (via the ESL-Displays program).
• Sophisticated profile features allow themes for diagram appearance and for standard and library simulation entities.

ESL-Studio includes a graphical editor for block diagram style model descriptions, while allowing textual ESL code to be used where appropriate (for example, to describe highly non-linear elements). You select standard simulation elements and interconnect them on a block diagram to build up the simulation description. ESL submodels can be created and included in a diagram through a special submodel element.

Note: ESL-Studio (Windows) can allow you to import legacy ESL ISE applications into ESL-Studio. To support this you must include the ESL ISE component when you install ESL.

Once you have created a simulation program (graphically, textually or a combination of both), compilation is initiated from ESL-Studio. You may then execute the compiled program immediately through an interpreter, or, for ESL-Pro, you have the option to further translate it to C++ or FORTRAN. The resulting executable program may then be run from ESL-Studio. In either case, execution is managed by the ESL-SEC (Simulation Execution Control) program which provides run-time control of the simulation. You have access to all program variables and parameters from the ESL-SEC program. This includes simulation parameters such as the communication interval, final simulation time, choice of integration algorithm and error tolerances. All variables and parameters can be set and changed dynamically. You can specify graphical and tabulated output on your block diagram through the use of special simulation display elements or alternatively from the Runtime Displays option of ESL-SEC. You can log all run time commands and output specifications to a driver file that can be used at a later time to repeat simulation scenarios.