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[About SimTool] [Version History] [Licence] [Documentation][Download][Demo Applets]

About SimTool

Simtool is a program for process-based discrete event simulation written in Java. Version 1.0 was developed in the winter semester 2001/2002 in the Wirtschaftsinformatik-Praktikum of the Institut für Wirtschaftswissenschaften, Abteilung Allgemeine Betriebswirtschaftslehre, Wirtschaftsinformatik und Informationsmanagement of the TU Braunschweig to be included in a virtual learning environment.

Version 2.0 was created as a part of the diploma thesis: A Script-driven Simulation Tool as an Improvement to the Education in Web-based Virtual Learning Environments. This document is available for download at the documentation section.

Version 2.1 was the first release of SimTool via Sourceforge.net. The most important change was packing everything into a signed jar file so that the user does not have to deal with all the security permissions.

An additional simulation component was created by Sandra Bangewitz and Manuela Bernhardt.

We decided to release Simtool under the terms of the GPL, in order to enable other students to continue the development of Simtool, while making sure, that this work stays free for everyone who wants to use and/or improve it. In order to allow the integration of Simtool in the virtual learning environment, we grant the additional right to include the Simtool in such an environment without the requirement to release the whole learning environment GPL'ed (see licence).

Version History

Simtool 2.1 was developed and is copyright (C) 2003 by Björn Paschilk and Torsten Klie, TU Braunschweig. The previous version Simtool 2.0 was developed and is copyright (C) 2002 by Torsten Klie and Christoph Schalong. The first version Simtool 1.0 was developed by Oleg Dück, Marco Hellmann, Jörg Hevers, Torsten Klie, Florian Maul, Nils Oppermann Björn Rösemeier and Christoph Schalong.

SimTool Licence

Simtool is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of theGNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

Simtool is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with Simtool; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA

In addition, as a special exception, it is allowed to integrate Simtool into avirtual learning environment and distribute the virtual learning environment as a whole, without the requirement of releasing the whole virtual learning environment under the terms of the GPL, as it would normally be required by the GPL. In case of the integration of Simtool into a virtual learning environment, the GPL shall only cover the Simtool-part of it.

Documentation

Installation Instructions

SimTool is released as a single jar file. Thus it should not be necessary to install anything. However, you will need a Java Virtual Machine which supports Java 1.4. You can get actual versions of Java from Sun's website. SimTool can be executed as a stand-alone application. In this mode, two command-line parameters are accepted. The first (-l) is the lesson file specified as an URL. If it is not specified, the file named "defaultLesson" (in the main package) will be used. The second parameter (-s) is the URL of a script which shall be executed when opening the SimTool. The default is not to open a script and to start with an empty simulation workspace (no simulation model and no exceptions loaded). In contrast, the applet accepts more parameters. There are four boolean parameters used to specify the desired GUI elements. If the lesson allows it, it is possible to change the visibility of these four GUI elements at runtime via the menu bar. With the other parameters, the simulation environment is configured by loading a lesson file, executing a script and loading one or more exception sets. All filenames must be proper URLs. An URL consists of a protocol specification, for example, http or file, followed by a colon and two slashes. If the http-protocol is used, the next part is the name of the host. The last part is the full path of the file, with slashes as separator characters between directories. Examples of valid URLs are: A parameter can be omitted if its default setting is desired.

Other documentation

Download

You can download SimTool as a single jar file via the Sourceforge file release system. The current release is Version 2.1.

Demo Applets

To allow you to play a little bit with SimTool, we have installed a few demo applets:
Last updated Thu Jul 31 14:02:04 CEST 2003 by Torsten Klie
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