gseim/gseim

GSEIM (General-purpose Simulator with Explicit and Implicit Methods) is meant for simulation of electrical circuits, especially power electronic circuits, and also for numerical solution of ordinary differential equations (ODEs). In terms of basic functionality, GSEIM is similar to commercial packages such as Simulink, Simscape, PSIM, and PLECS. However, at this stage, GSEIM does not handle real-time simulation.

GSEIM includes a schematic entry GUI (python) adapted from the GNU Radio package, a C++ solver, a Qt-python plotting GUI, and a few additional python programs.

Installation instructions

Installing pre-built image (Linux only)

Pre-compiled images are available on GitHub. To install the latest image, download the Python wheel image from the latest GitHub CI run.

GitHub Actions for GSEIM project
Click on latest passing (green) CI run
Download gseim-wheel package at the bottom of the page, which will expand to a .whl file.
Run pip3 install ~/Downloads/gseim*.whl. (You may want to do this in a virtual environment.)
To run the GUI, it is also necessary to install PyQt5 or PyQt6 (pip3 install pyqt5 or pip3 install pyqt6, depending on your system).

Once installed, the GUI can be launched with gseim-gui.

Building from source (Linux or Mac)

GSEIM is built using Bazel, so it must be installed prior to attempting to build the source. Gtk and Qt are also both required for the GUI.

If you do not already have Bazel installed, install it.
- On Linux, you can follow the instructions provided by Bazel. The simplest method might be installing Bazelisk through npm:
```
sudo apt install npm
npm i @bazel/bazelisk
```
- On Mac, the easiest way is Homebrew:
```
brew install bazelisk
```
Navigate to the source directory
```
cd gseim_grc/src/
```
Install PyQT5 or PyQT6. This must be done manually (the package does not directly depend on these) because the required package varies by OS.
- For Ubuntu prior to 22.04:
```
pip3 install pyqt5
```
- For Mac or Ubuntu 22.04 and newer:
```
pip3 install pyqt6
```

You're now ready to run GSEIM directly, or build a distributable wheel package.

Running the GSEIM GUI

bazel run //grc:gseim_gui

If you want to run GSEIM locally (without internet), first find your bazel version using

bazel --version

As an example, suppose the version number is 5.3.0. In that case, use

USE_BAZEL_VERSION=5.3.0 bazel run //grc:gseim_gui

The GSEIM GUI should show up. Follow instructions in the Getting started page of the GSEIM manual.

Building distributable Python wheels

bazel build //:gseim_wheel

The wheel will be located in bazel-bin/gseim-*.whl.

Usage notes

Using custom hierarchical blocks

In order to generate hierarchical blocks, it's necessary to set the environment variable HIER_BLOCK_USER_DIR to a folder where the generated outputs are saved.

This can be done by adding the following line to your .bashrc/.zshrc/etc. setup file:

export HIER_BLOCK_USER_DIR=/home/$USER/user_folder/

or by running the GUI with the environment variable specified, such as:

HIER_BLOCK_USER_DIR=/home/$USER/user_folder/ gseim-gui

when running an installed package, or

HIER_BLOCK_USER_DIR=/home/$USER/user_folder/ bazel run ...

when running from source.

Documentation

The GSEIM documentation can be accessed online (https://gseim.github.io).

License

The use and redistribution of GSEIM is governed by GPLv3.

Future Plans

enhancement of element library
additional power electronics examples
development of GSEIM-based educational material for power electronics courses

gseim / gseim