User Experience

MapleSim 2016 provides numerous enhancements, both large and small, to provide a smoother, more streamlined user experience.

These improvements include:

• Collapsible task panes provide a larger model workspace, so you can see more of your model at once.
• Task panes, such as the component palettes pane and console window, can be set to appear automatically as needed and disappear again when the action is completed. As a result, panels always appear at optimum viewing size without taking up model space when they are not being used.
• Improved layout ensures the tools you need for your current task are available at your fingertips.
• New built-in Apps give you point-and-click access to powerful Maple-based analysis and utility tools from within the MapleSim environment. Using these Apps, you can perform parameter sweeps, Monte Carlo simulations, code generation, and more, all without knowing, or even seeing, Maple.
• The new MapleSim App feature also allows you to deploy custom-built interactive applications to other MapleSim users in your organization, so they can access, explore and analyze your model with only minimal knowledge of MapleSim. These same applications can also be deployed over the web to non-MapleSim users using the MapleSim Server.
• New toolbar buttons corresponding to tasks in the context-sensitive menus offer alternative access to commonly used operations, to accommodate different preferences in working styles.
• A new search bar gives you a single point of access for searching the help pages, component libraries, examples, and models from the MapleSim Model Gallery on the Maplesoft web site, so you can quickly find exactly the resources you need.
• Redesigned interface icons offer improved scaling on high resolution monitors.

 

Contact Modeling

The built-in Multibody component library has been extended to include support for contact modeling. Over 15 new components allow you to quickly model contact between different objects in your model. Components cover a variety of surface shapes, including torus, sphere, and cylinder, allowing you to take into account the forces and torques at the contact points caused by penetration and friction.

 

Advanced Solver Options

MapleSim 2016 further expands the extensive collection of solver options in MapleSim that allow you to control the behavior of the simulation solvers.

• You can now set a minimum and maximum step size for variable-step solvers.
• The plot events option, which allows you to specify whether or not to calculate additional plot points when an event is triggered during the simulation, is now available for both fixed-step and variable-step solvers.
• A new option for variable-step solvers allows you to specify an initial rate hysteresis, which is used to set a minimum threshold rate for all event triggers at the start of the simulation.