SimTool, an object oriented simulation environment

SimTool was developed under the NASA Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. The objective of this SBIR effort was to develop an object-oriented simulation environment capable of supporting simulation users and developers in the creation and maintenance of large, complex, and long lived simulations through a point-and-click graphical interface to all components in the simulation environment. This paper discusses in detail SimTool, the software tool and environment, the features and operations, as well as the object-oriented classification approach to simulation design, construction, and execution. It also discusses the general organization and design methodology of SimTool's knowledge base and library. It presents two working simulation examples and demonstrates SimTool's capability to integrate different simulations. It also discusses the various simulation tasks that SimTool supports with the aide of an interactive graphical interface to construct, generate and form a simulation application executable file.<
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