Guy and Seth on Simulink

October 25th, 2011

Today I will illustrate how to combine two features I like: Subsystem Variants and Masking.

The Question

I created a subsystem with two variants and I have specific masks for each variant:

I would like to automatically display the mask of the active variant on the top subsystem.

The Solution

• Use get_param to determine the active variant
• Use find_system to determine the subsystem corresponding to the active variant
• Use get_param to obtain a string containing the Icon Drawing Commands of the active variant
• Evaluate this string as the top subsystem Icon Drawing Commands

All together, the Mask Editor should look like this:

And your model will behave like this:

Now it's your turn

Have you integrated Subsystem Variants in your workflow? Leave a comment here.

By Guy Rouleau

19:43 UTC | Posted in Commands, Masking, Model-Based Design | Permalink | 2 Comments »

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2 Responses to “Dynamics Mask Icons for Subsystem Variants”

1. KE replied on April 17th, 2012 at 09:43 UTC :
   

   What are some reasons to use Variant Subsystems? Is it to try out different algorithms in the code, for example vehicle braking algorithms that will afterwards be compared in order to select the one with the best performance?

2. Guy Rouleau replied on April 17th, 2012 at 11:52 UTC :
   

   @KE: The use case you mention is one possibility.

   It is common to have multiple models of the same plant. For some tasks, a high-fidelity model is required. For some other tasks, a lower-fidelity plant is acceptable and simulates faster.

   Another use case is switching between a simulated plant and hardware drivers, as I illustrated here:

   http://blogs.mathworks.com/seth/2011/12/27/model-based-design-dilemma/

   For those interested in generating code, you can use the “Generate preprocessor conditionals” option, to generate code for all variants, but build only one selected using a “#define” in the code.

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