ARTISAN Studio helps underpin intelligent motor controller innovation

To help achieve its product development goals, Control Techniques has adopted ARTiSAN Studio, the UML and SysML compliant real-time systems and software modelling tool suite from ARTiSAN Software Tools, to underpin its embedded software development process for future projects.

“We have set exacting requirements for our embedded software development environment and, as a consequence, they have been quite difficult to meet,” said Mike Cade, the control systems design manager at Control Techniques. “ARTiSAN Studio fitted our needs on several counts.”

One of the big issues for Control Techniques was that, although the company wanted to access the productivity benefits that a standards-based real-time modelling tool could offer, it also wanted one that was flexible and extensible enough to adapt to the company’s existing code generation standards and practices. “We have been able to mould ARTiSAN Studio to reflect the way we work customising the code generation process so that it adheres to the company’s coding standards,” continued Mike Cade. “Furthermore, we have been able to add compiler-specific options via the embedded software models that pass directly into the code.”

ARTiSAN Studio also successfully addressed the issue Control Techniques had in keeping its embedded software up-to-date with the design changes being made to the company’s intelligent electronic drives. “ARTiSAN Studio keeps the model and code absolutely in synch throughout the development cycle,” added Mike Cade. “With the automatic code generation capability, we know that, at any point in time, the model is a true view of the code and vice versa.”

Having proven its use of ARTiSAN Studio on several initial embedded software development projects designed to enhance and upgrade various existing products, Control Techniques now plans to instigate its use on all future new product development projects as well.

“The strengths that make ARTiSAN Studio the UML/SysML modelling tool of choice in the aerospace and defence world are now increasingly being transferred to other vertical markets like control and automation,” said Jeremy Goulding, President and CEO of ARTiSAN Software Tools. “ARTiSAN Studio enables teams of developers to visualise, design and validate complex mission critical systems before building them, and simplifies implementation with code generation and software reuse. It is highly scaleable and improves productivity and quality when used on both small and large technical projects. Studio’s underlying metamodel and repository technology provide a stable, robust working environment ensuring fast availability of model information, while securing all valuable data. Teams using Studio’s powerful extensions can model architectural frameworks, systems and software as well as document legacy systems for the complete project lifecycle from start to finish.”