High Costs and Long Loading Times for Mathwork Tools

Not every user has access to the license he needs.

AUDI AG makes intensive use of the Mathworks tools Simulink and Stateflow for model based development. These tools provide a large number of features and many optional extensions. But high license costs lead to situations, in which not every user has access to the license he needs. Additionally many users often only need to read and analyse models. These use cases require only a small subset of the features Simulink and Stateflow provide. Loading large models sometimes takes a lot of time and leads to additional waiting time.

Lightweight solution for "read only"

AUDI AG decided to develop a Model Viewer for MATLAB Simulink and Stateflow models in cooperation with itemis AG. The goal was to create a lightweight solution optimized for the “read only” use cases. It should come with much lower license costs, shorter loading times for large models and a better usability for reading and analysing models.

Model Viewer fulfills all requirements

After only four month of development the first release of the Model Viewer was provided to the first pilot users from the HIL test team. Two follow up releases came with bug fixes and the implementation of additional feature requests from the pilot users. The resulting Model Viewer fulfills all initial requirements: Loading large models is up to eight times faster (15s vs. 2min). No “waiting for a license” any more. Dependencies to referenced elements in libraries are automatically resolved. The browser has a high usability and is easy to learn and leads to an efficient navigation of large, hierarchical models.

Additional features like a graphical compare of models or signal highlighting were developed in the continued corporation between Audi and itemis. The Model Viewer is already used by more than 200 users mainly from the HIL test team, and was 2016 rolled out to more users with the goal to deploy it to all MATLAB users inside Audi. The created Model Viewer is now publicly available as the Model Viewer within the itemis product line of itemis.