What is a convenient way to do Simulink model review ?

I would like to do a review of Simulink model done by my colleague. I was wondering if there is some recommended tool or good practice to conveniently do this.

My expectations on a review tool:

• Some functionality that would allow me to create "review issues" which would be some comments attached to specific blocks or group of blocks.

• Some functionality that would show all "review issues" in model (or some links/shortcuts to review issues.)

So far I was experimenting with:

• annotations ( https://se.mathworks.com/help/simulink/ug/annotations.html )
• exporting Simulink to webview ( https://se.mathworks.com/help/rptgenext/ug/tutorial-creating-web-views-of-simulink-models.html )

, but both of those were rather awkward for my use case and it was not at all convenient method to do a review.

[Sysenso Systems]

Pls check our file-exhange: https://in.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/75322-model-review-tool and share your comments.

Answer 1

[Fangjun Jiang]

I would suggest the "Simulink Check" toolbox or Model Advisor in general.

[Josef Prochazka]

Thanks for suggestion. Model Advisor is really useful and we are using Model Advisor for automatic checks of several guidelines and rules, but even model that is compliant with all guidelines and automatic checks can recieve some manual review comments. So my question was more about this manual review.

Answer 2

[Hugo de Kock]

Hi Josef, I am also working on that problem at the moment. I am asking myself:

a) In the role as a Model Reviewer, how can I systematically review a model and document things like review comments and review status?

b) How can I view all the differences between the previous version of the model and the current version, review each change and then make some comment or assign a review status?

c) The next question would be: "what is the reason behind that change?" So here I am looking for something like a link to a Change Request or Requirement.

d) In general, as a model reviewer, you should also check that the model is implementing a set of requirements.

e) Other review questions could also include, "is the model compliant to certain checks (e.g. ISO-26262)?"

I have been able to partly solve this problem with the Model Compare Tool, that is built-in in Simulink. (Model-Dif and Report generation, but there is no way to comment each change at the moment)

There is a product called "Simulink Requirements" that you can use to document requirements and link them to blocks inside models.

I think for the use-case you described, you could use Simulink Requirements to make a document with a list of "issues" and link those issues to blocks or groups of blocks. Then generate a report from Simulink Requirements or just give back the Model and Simulink.Requirements Document to your colleague.

If you need some more help on using Simulink Requirements you are welcome to contact me: [e-mail]

Kind regards, Hugo

Answer 3

[Hugo de Kock]

Hi @Josef Prochazka,

In case you did not know this already, there is a built-in Simulink Review Manager, or Review Perspective in Simulink.

See the links here:

https://nl.mathworks.com/help/releases/R2021b/simulink/ug/collaborate-by-adding-comments-to-blocks.html

https://blogs.mathworks.com/simulink/2021/10/22/simulink-review-manager/?s_tid=srchtitle_review%20perspective_6

Using this feature, a model reviewer can add comments to a model, that are related to specific blocks. The comments are saved in a seperate file, so you won't change the model just by reviewing it.

Does that help?

Kind regards,

Hugo

Answer 4

[Valeriy]

This solution is looking promising: Simulink Model Comparison for GitHub Pull Requests - MATLAB & Simulink (mathworks.com)

Unfortunately GitHub-hosted runner does not fully support MATLAB and you will likely have to use your own self-hosted runner. See here: MATLAB Actions (github.com)