Editor's Pick: Altair Introduces Core Model-Based Development Suite for Free

Dear DE Reader:

After 728 days of political ads, you might deem “free” a four-letter language unit. But here's something free that sounds well worth your time.

Actually, it's four somethings. Altair recently announced Basic Editions of its suite of Model-Based Development (MBD) software for designing multidisciplinary control and signal processing systems. At the same time, Altair opened up its OML (OpenMatrix Language) computational programming language source code. All are free downloads.

OML is a computational engine for building calculations and test algorithms as well as creating specialized functions or custom toolboxes. OML has its own library of built-in functions, so you can use it as is, or you can extend it with shared user community-developed toolboxes. Hit the link in today's write-up to grab your copy.

The MBD Basic Edition suite has three applications: Altair Compose, Altair Activate and Altair Embed. The suite comes with access to free online training videos. All seem like highly useful siblings of their like-named Professional Editions. The Pro versions, which aren't free, have the advanced features and support that serious commercial developers require.

Altair Compose is for running calculations as well as manipulating and visualizing data, including simulation and test data results. You can filter signals, fit polynomials through data, perform optimizations and the like. You can import and execute scripts from Octave and MATLAB. It can access OML and bridge to Python, so you can broaden its range.

Altair Activate is your multidisciplinary system tool for quickly modeling and simulating multidisciplinary systems as 1D signal-based or physical block diagrams. It supports mixing signal-based and physical modeling in the same diagram.

For embedded system development, the Basic Edition Model-Based Development suite offers the Altair Embed visual environment. You don't have to do manual coding since it generates code from block diagram models automatically. You can simulate dynamic systems with continuous or discrete-time behaviors as well as event-based behaviors. The Embed Basic Edition supports connectivity to Arduino microcontroller hardware; the Professional Edition supports more microcontroller units.

Whether it's the Basic Edition Model-Based Development suite or OML, Altair doesn't care if you're a professional engineer, professional student or professional amateur. They want to induce you into giving MBD a shot so that you can learn first-hand what it can do for you. The zero greenback price tag is fetching too, so hit today's link, watch some videos then download your copies and see for yourself.

Thanks, Pal. – Lockwood

Anthony J. Lockwood
Editor at Large, DE