TPN Designer

The goal of this project is modelling and discrete-event simulation of complex systems using Timed Petri Nets and in particular GSPN-like nets. TPN Designer is characterised by its modular constructs. A model can be decomposed as a interconnection of pages. A page has a interface of input/output ports. The behaviour of a page consists of a TPN subnet which can recursively be structured in sub pages and so forth. The page is the replication unit. It can be replicated to generate linear (or pipeline) or 2-dimensional (or grid) topologies. Connections between compatible net elements can be established visually through the mouse or can be specified through a simple yet powerful scripting language. A script can be associated with a page for automating its port connections (to generate open/closed topologies). A root level script can be associated to a project with the purposes of specifying irregular interconnections and model parameter set-up. TPN Designer is a graphical toolset which consists of two integrated sub-environments: TPN CAD and TPN ENGINE. The former assists the modeller during the editing of modular and scalable TPN models. The latter is devoted to model compilation, debugging, simulation and statistical data collection. The simulation engine is actor based. TPN Designer is totally implemented in Java and it is truly portable on any platform Java-aware. A TPN model is externalised using XML and associated DTD.