setExternalInput

Use the setExternalInput function to specify external data for the simulation configuration stored in a Simulink.SimulationInput object. Then, configure the Inport block to load the input data as a continuous signal using the setBlockParameter function. Finally, run the simulation using the Simulink.SimulationInput object.

Open the model LoadInputData. The model contains one Inport block that is connected to a Gain block with a Gain value of 2. The output of the Gain block is connected to an Outport block.

mdl = "LoadInputData";
open_system(mdl)

Create a Simulink.SimulationInput object for the model.

simIn = Simulink.SimulationInput(mdl);

Create input data to load using the Inport block. For this example, create data that represents a sine wave using an evenly spaced vector of time values. Then, use the sin function to create a signal value for each time point.

sampleTime = 0.1;
numSteps = 100;
time = sampleTime*(0:numSteps);
time = time';

data = sin(2*pi/3*time);

You can specify external input data for top-level input ports using several formats. For this example, use the timetable format. To create a timetable, the time data must be a duration vector. Use the seconds function to create a duration vector with units of seconds. Then, create the timetable.

secs = seconds(time);
inData = timetable(secs,data);

Use the setExternalInput function to add the external input data inData to the simulation configuration in the Simulink.SimulationInput object simIn.

simIn = setExternalInput(simIn,inData);

You can also configure other aspects of the simulation using the Simulink.SimulationInput object, such as block parameter values, model configuration parameter values, and variable values.

Suppose you want to configure the Inport block to load the input data as a continuous signal. Use the setBlockParameter function to enable the Interpolation parameter and specify the Sample time parameter for the block as continuous (0).

inBlk = mdl + "/Inport";
simIn = setBlockParameter(simIn,inBlk,"Interpolate","on");
simIn = setBlockParameter(simIn,inBlk,"SampleTime","0");

Simulate the model using the configuration on the SimulationInput object.

out = sim(simIn);

The simulation runs, loading the input data as a continuous signal.

When your model contains several top-level input ports, you can specify the input data to load as a Simulink.SimulationData.Dataset object that contains an element with the data for each input port. The first element in the object contains the data for the input port with a port number of 1, the second element contains the data for the input port with a port number of 2, and so on.

When you specify the data to load using the variable that contains the data, the data in the variable you specify is added to the Simulink.SimulationInput object so the data is available for simulations run using the object.

This example shows how to load data for three top-level input ports into a simulation configured using a SimulationInput object. The input data for each input port uses a different format to illustrate several available formats.

Open the model InportLoading. The model contains three Inport blocks that are connected directly to three Outport blocks.

mdl = "InportLoading";
open_system(mdl)

Use the createInputDataset function to create a Dataset object that contains an element for each input port in the model.

inDS = createInputDataset(mdl);

By default, the Dataset object created by the createInputDataset function contains placeholder timeseries objects for each element. Create input data for each input port to replace the placeholder data.

For the first input port, create a timeseries object with data that represents a line with a slope of 0.5. For the time data, create an evenly spaced time vector using a sample time, or spacing, of 0.5. To create the signal values, multiply the time vector by 0.5.

sampleTime = 0.5;
numSteps = 20;
time = sampleTime*(0:numSteps)';

data = 0.5*time;

lineTS = timeseries(data,time);

For the second input port, create a timetable with data that represents a sine wave.

sampleTime = 0.1;
numSteps = 100;
time = sampleTime*(0:numSteps)';

sinVals = sin(2*pi/3*time);

secs = seconds(time);
sinTT = timetable(secs,sinVals);

For the third input port, create a structure that contains data for a constant with a value of 3. For input data loading, the structure format has the fields time and signals. The signals field is an array of structures that each contain the data for a signal in the field values. For this example, the signals array has only one element because the structure specifies input data for one input port.

constStruct.time = [0 10]';
constStruct.signals.values = [3 3]';

Replace the placeholder data with the data created for each input port.

inDS{1} = lineTS;
inDS{2} = sinTT;
inDS{3} = constStruct;

Create a Simulink.SimulationInput object to configure a simulation of the model.

simIn = Simulink.SimulationInput(mdl);

Use the setExternalInput function to specify the input data to load for all three input ports using the Dataset object. The function adds the variable inDs to the SimulationInput object.

simIn = setExternalInput(simIn,inDS);

Simulate the model using the SimulationInput object.

out = sim(simIn);

The simulation runs, loading the input data as specified on the SimulationInput object.