From: Kurt Jensen To: designCPN@daimi.au.dk Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 09:44:58 +0100 Subject: (dCPN) CPN Tools is replacing Design/CPN Dear Colleagues, We hereby announce the second release of the CPN Tools developed by the CPN Group at the University of Aarhus, Denmark. The CPN Tools are intended to replace Design/CPN, which is a widespread software package for modelling and analysis by means of Coloured Petri Nets. Just like Design/CPN, the CPN Tools are available free of charge for all kinds of users, including commercial companies. As Design/CPN will no longer be actively supported from the begining of 2004, we encourage all users to upgrade to CPN Tools as soon as possible. Currently CPN Tools is only available for Windows 2000/XP, but other platforms (especially Linux) are expected to follow. The present version of the CPN Tools supports: * Construction of CPN models * Analysis by means of simulation * Analysis by means of full reachability graphs The user interface has been designed in cooperation with leading HCI experts, and it includes a number of novel interaction mechanisms such as the use of two-handed input by means of a mouse and a trackball. The development has been supported by the Danish National Centre for IT-Research, Hewlett-Packard, Nokia Research Centre, Microsoft Research Limited, and George Mason University. The current version is a major improvement over the first Beta-release. The most important new features are: * Added support for fusion sets * Reachability graph construction * Ability to undo almost any operation Furthermore this version has undergone extensive testing to ensure the program is fairly stable, and this effort will continue. Some of the major improvements (compared to Design/CPN) are the following: * Much better user interface; easier and faster to use * Editing and simulation are integrated in a single mode * Much more incremental syntax check and code generation; both take place as background tasks during the construction of the model * Much faster simulation engine * Ability to undo almost any operation The major shortcomings (compared to Design/CPN) are the lack of support for: * Simulation based performance analysis and capacity planning * Message Sequence Charts and other animation facilities (this is currently being worked on) * Condensed reachability graphs Models can be transferred from Design/CPN to CPN Tools by means of an XML-based text format. The format resembles the upcoming excange format for (high-level) Petri Nets, and, certainly, when the standard reaches a more stable state, support for this excange format is planned. For more details about CPN Tools and the license conditions, please see: http://www.daimi.au.dk/CPNTools/ Kurt Jensen ---- [[ Homepage and archive: http://www.daimi.au.dk/designCPN/email/ ]] [[ Subscribe: http://mailman.daimi.au.dk/mailman/listinfo/designcpn ]]