Using ScopeView with RT-LAB

ScopeView is used to display signals and waveforms acquired from various data acquisition systems and to perform mathematical calculations and signal processing. ScopeView is tightly integrated with RT-LAB and allows visualization of signals acquired from real-time simulation and also serves as an analog and digital oscilloscope.

ScopeView can acquire and import signals and data from many sources. It supports RT-LAB data source and other data source types like HYPERSIM, EMTP-RV, MATLAB and, COMTRADE. It also allows for managing many data sources at the same time.

Once the data has been acquired and/or imported, ScopeView makes it possible to execute many types of graphics processing, such as zoom, superimposition, tracking cursor, graph displacement. It also offers a rich set of mathematical functions to calculate new waveforms and to generate complex analyses.

Reports can then be produced and exported to various file formats such as PDF, MATLAB or Post-Script. More information is available in ScopeView user manual; to access this document, open ScopeView and click the User Manual item from the Help menu.

Opening ScopeView

To open ScopeView, click on the ScopeView icon in the RT-LAB main toolbar. This icon is represented by a Cartesian plan with red and blue signals.

ScopeView will appear after the display of the splash screen. Please refer to the RT-LAB installation guide for more details on how to install ScopeView. Note that a valid ScopeView license is required to launch ScopeView.

At start-up, ScopeView opens the main ScopeView window and the Signals form. The Signals form allows choosing a signal source. Refers to the following sections for more details on the main ScopeView window and the Signal form.

Selecting and Loading an RT-LAB Data Source

In order to be able to acquire data and signals from the real-time simulator, you need to select and load an RT-LAB data source in ScopeView. Click the Open Data Source Files button from the main toolbar.

Alternatively, click the corresponding File menu item (Ctrl+O).

At this point, the Data Sources Chooser dialog is displayed.

Select the RT-LAB tab from the dialog and then choose the project and model from which the data should be acquired. Note that this model must be compiled correctly to be available in the list of models and running on the target to perform acquisition operation.

Also select one of the model’s acquisition groups and click the Load button. All signals from this acquisition group will be available in the Signal Form of ScopeView.

Adding Signals to the Acquisition Group

There are two methods to add signals to an acquisition group.

The usual method is based on the model’s console:

• First, add one or more OpComm block to your model’s console. Each console OpComm refers to one acquisition group.
• Open the OpComm Mask Parameters dialog.
• Change the Acquisiton group number. This number represents the acquisition group ID. All signals of this group will share the same acquisition parameters.
• Change the Number of inports of the block. Each inport will receive one or more signals from the real-time subsystem and each signal that passes through this block will be available in ScopeView.
• Close the OpComm Mask Parameters dialog.
• Wire signals from your real-time subsystem to your console’s OpComm blocks.
• To change the signal name that will be used by the acquisition, right-click the signal’s source in the real-time subsystem and select Signal Properties... and type a new Signal name. This name will be shown in ScopeView Signal Form. See Selecting Signals section for more information.
• If signals that pass through the OpComm are buses, change the signal names after each virtual block (mux, bus creator, ...) of real-time subsystem to create complex name structure.
• Rebuild your model with RT-LAB.

The following figure shows a model that has one acquisition group that contains 4 signals. One signal, called MySignal, passes through inport 1 of the OpComm block. Three signals pass through the second inport of the OpComm block. The signals’ bus name are respectively A.D.E, B.D.E and C.E.

The second method, called dynamic acquisition, allows the user to access any model’s signals without having to wire them from the real-time subsystem blocks to the console OpComm block.

Here are the steps to add signals using dynamic acquisition:

• Add one or more OpComm block to your model’s console. Each console OpComm refers to one acquisition group. Usually, the same OpComm block is used for normal acquisition and dynamic acquisition.
• Open the OpComm Mask Parameters dialog. Set the acquisition group and the number of inports as explained above.
• Check the Dynamic signals output.
• Close the OpComm Mask Parameters dialog.
• Make sure your model is properly compiled with RT-LAB
• Open the Probe Control Panel of RT-LAB using the RT-LAB main Toolbar.
• Click the tab at the top of the Probe Control Panel to select one of the acquisition groups.
• Click the Signals button to open the Dynamic Signal Panel dialog.
• Using the Current model systems and signals set tree, browse signals, select them and click the Add button. The signal will be added to the Dynamic signal lists.
• The dynamic signal names are defined in the real-time subsystem directly on the wire at the output of the block that calculates and outputs the value of the signal. To change the name, as mentioned above, right-click the signal in the real-time subsystem and select Signal Properties... and type a new Signal name. Rebuild your model.
• Close the Dynamic Signal Panel and close the Probe Control Panel.

Refer to the Acquiring and Viewing Data section of the User Guide for more details on how to add signals to the acquisition groups.

Selecting Signals

Once the data source is selected and loaded, the Signals form lets you choose signals to be acquired for each data source and select the signals that will appear on each graph. It also lets you perform mathematical operations and signal processing.

To open the Signals form, click the Select Signals button from the main toolbar. Alternatively, click the

Select Signals item from the Graph menu.

To add signals to a graph, first, select the data source from the Data Source List and then select the type of signal to be shown on the list. By default, signals sent to model’s console are listed, but it is also possible to display dynamic acquisition signals. Also, note that the list of dynamic signals available in ScopeView could be selected using the RT-LAB Probe Control Panel.

Click the signal’s name to add it to the Selected Signals at the bottom of the form. These signals are also automatically inserted into graphs of the current report page.

When a large number of signals must be selected, change the Signal Selection Mode option to Multiple to add multiple signals at the same time. Also change the Graph Creation option to Superimposed to add multiple signals to the same graph instead of individual graphs. Advanced options and other functionalities are explained in the ScopeView User Manual.

Acquiring Signals

To acquire signals, first, verify that all models used by the RT-LAB data sources are running. Make sure that signals are selected and already assigned correctly to graphs as described in the previous section.

Start the acquisition by pressing the Start button from the main toolbar. Alternatively, click the Start item from the Acquisition menu.

At this point, ScopeView starts the process of getting signals from the real-time simulator and displays signals in the graphs. When the model is paused, ScopeView will wait until the model sends its signals.

Also note that RT-LAB will display the following error message when the model is not loaded.

Using ScopeView Acquisition Parameters

The ScopeView acquisition parameters are used to configure how the acquisitions are performed. For example, they allow changing the sampling duration, the number of acquisitions to perform or activating synchronization and triggering.

Acquisition parameters are shown under the main toolbar by clicking on the Acquisition Parameters toggle button of the main toolbar. Alternatively, these parameters could be displayed by clicking on the Acquisition Parameters item of the View menu.

Example
The following figure illustrates the behavior of the acquisition when the following parameters are specified and the trigger is enabled:

• Trigger and synchronization enabled.
• Trigger activated by the model after 2 seconds of simulation.
• Start time = 1 second.
• Time length = 3 seconds.
• Sampling rate = 1000 samples by second.

Opening ScopeView without RT-LAB

ScopeView could be executed without running RT-LAB. The next steps explain how to run ScopeView from the file system. The ScopeView executable is available under the installation folder of RT-LAB (RTLAB/ ScopeView).
The RT-LAB default installation folder is: C:\OPAL-RT\RT-LABXX.X, where XX.X is the version of RT-LAB. It could vary based on the installation path. To get the path of RT-LAB, consult the environment variable RTLAB_ROOT or typeset RTLAB_ROOT from the windows command line (cmd.exe).

To open ScopeView from the file system:

• Open Windows Explorer (Win+E)
• Go to the RT-LAB installation folder (type %RTLAB_ROOT% into address bar)
• Change directory to ScopeView
• Double click on ScopeView.exe