[Scilab-users] Xcos - names/labels for subsystems and ports?

[Paul Bignier]

Hello Graham,

Pleased to hear that you're using Xcos, it's always good to have feedback!

1) Right-clicking a "link" (which you call "signal") pops "Format" and 
"Link style" menus which enables you to label/color it as well as using 
automatic layouts (also accessible via keyboard shortcuts).

2) When dragging a link from a port, you can click in the diagram at 
random points. Those will be "control points" through which the link 
will pass regardless of the position of its connecting blocks. You may 
play with the demos to check it out.

3) If you want to label ports at the moment, you need to define your own 
block and set its graphics.in_label & graphics.out_label in its 
interface function (typically, the ones in modules/scicos_blocks/macros/*).

4) That goes with the 1).

5) I don't understand why you would mask a superblock before designing 
it properly. Masks are meant to be created once your block is stable, so 
there's something I'm missing here.

Hope this helps!
Regars,
Paul

On 04/12/2016 02:30 PM, Graham Bartlett wrote:
> I've done quite a lot of work with Matlab and Simulink in previous jobs.  At my new place, I'm checking out Xcos (and hence Scilab) as a free alternative to Simulink, partly on principle, and partly so our team aren't constrained by bean-counters telling us how many development seats we can afford. :)
>
> What's currently bugging me with Xcos is subsystem and signal labelling, which are fundamental to building a design that's maintainable.  There are a few newbie things I'm trying to work out with this, none of which I've managed to find in the Xcos tutorials, help docs, or the wiki.  I went looking for a mailing list FAQ but I didn't see one.
>
> 1) The first one should be simple.  How do I make signals default to horizontal instead of rat's-nest (point-to-point)?
>
> 2) Perhaps related to that, is it possible to manually drag signals to where I want them to be laid out?  Some time back I used VisSim (for another example) - that also routed signals automatically, but it had a "wiring" block which let you direct them via a particular point.  I can't find anything like that in Xcos.  Of course I can use from/goto blocks where the automatic layout doesn't look good, or I could use unity gains or single-input sum blocks as a hack to force signals through some point without changing them, but none of that is really ideal.  My rule of thumb is that if the design layout looks messy or rushed then the thought processes involved probably were too, and that makes me worried.
>
> 3) In Simulink, I can put labels on inputs and outputs.  If I've got a subsystem calculating biquad filter coefficients, say, I can label the inputs "cornerFreq", "qFactor" and "sampleTime", and the outputs as "b0/b1/b2/a0/a1/a2".  When I drop an instance of that subsystem into a diagram, those names will appear next to the inputs/outputs.  That makes the design clearer, instead of having to dig into the subsystem and look for annotion text in there (or worse, figure it out directly from the design itself).  Is there a way to make Xcos subsystems do this?
>
> 4) Simulink lets you put names on signal flows as they come out of an output.  As the signal flow goes through the design, Simulink labels the signal.  Typically you'd give this a variable name.  Auto-coding can then use that variable name, or if you're coding up a design manually then you can use that name.  I can see the "Kalman" demo doing something like this (or perhaps like point 2, I can't tell), but I can't find anywhere how those names for flows are set up.
>
> 5) Masks.  If it's your own block, Simulink lets you look at the subsystem under the mask.  Xcos lets you put a mask on a block, but I can't then see any way to look at the subsystem under the mask, except by completely deleting the mask.  For us mere mortals whose designs don't always work first time every time, this could be a problem.
>
> Thanks folks.
>
> Graham.
>
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Paul BIGNIER
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