Re: matlab & simulink

[gross]

Kathy,
    We have successfully used Matlab for an agent-based model, though it was
not our first choice and we are moving that model to C++ to better 
interface with all our other models. An advantage is the graphical interfaces
which are easy to set up and quite flexible. The disadvantages are that it
is not very OO, the code produced by the automatic code generator (that 
supposedly
produces C++ code) is terrible, and that it is awfully slow particularly if
you are doing real-time graphics from the simulation. We only used this because
the modeler needed to get something done quickly, knew Matlab, and we were
able to let the code run for days. There are many different approaches to
modeling chemical interactions - the traditional ODE/PDE and particle based 
approaches are now supplemented by detailed molecular modeling, and there are
entirely different approaches (some agent-based) when dealing with environmental
interactions. As Cal points out, what modeling system is best really depends on 
the questions and whether you care about things such as parallelization, OO
design, numerical PDE solvers, etc. 
   Cheers,
       Lou Gross
Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
    and Mathematics
Director, The Institute for Environmental Modeling
University of Tennessee - Knoxville
address@hidden
http://www.tiem.utk.edu/~gross/
http://atlss.org/ (ATLSS Project Home Page)
http://archives.math.utk.edu/mathbio/ (Math Archives for Life Sciences)
   


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