SimTool, an object oriented simulation environment

SimTool was developed under the NASA Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. The objective of this SBIR effort was to develop an object-oriented simulation environment capable of supporting simulation users and developers in the creation and maintenance of large, complex, and long lived simulations through a point-and-click graphical interface to all components in the simulation environment. This paper discusses in detail SimTool, the software tool and environment, the features and operations, as well as the object-oriented classification approach to simulation design, construction, and execution. It also discusses the general organization and design methodology of SimTool´s knowledge base and library. It presents two working simulation examples and demonstrates SimTool´s capability to integrate different simulations. It also discusses the various simulation tasks that SimTool supports with the aide of an interactive graphical interface to construct, generate and form a simulation application executable file