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101 lines
3.7 KiB
Markdown
101 lines
3.7 KiB
Markdown
| [Home](/trick) → [Tutorial Home](Tutorial) → Introduction |
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<!-- Section -->
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<a id=introduction></a>
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# 🏁 Introduction
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**Contents**
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* [What Trick Is](#what-trick-is)<br>
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* [The Goal of Trick](#the-goal-of-trick)<br>
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* [The Objective of This Tutorial](#the-objective-of-this-tutorial)<br>
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* [Installing Trick](#installing-trick)<br>
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***
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<a id=what-trick-is></a>
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## What Trick Is
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Trick is a NASA Open Source simulation framework for running time-based physics
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models. It builds executable simulations with a common architecture, using user
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supplied simulation definition files and user supplied "model code". A Trick
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based simulation provides many capabilities such as realtime
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synchronization, job scheduling, simulation state save and restore (checkpoint),
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data-recording, interactive variable manipulation (variable server), numeric
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state integration and an input processor. It also includes tools for plotting
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recorded data, and many other supporting utilities and libraries.
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Trick is written in C/C++ and Java and supports both Linux and MacOSX computer
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operating systems.
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The name "Trick" is handed down from motocross. It is not an acronym. It is
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slang for "really cool"... or something of that nature.
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---
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<a id=the-goal-of-trick></a>
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## The Goal of Trick
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The goal of Trick is to help simulation developers to focus on the algorithms
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and equations of their problem domain rather than repeatedly solving the same,
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time-consuming simulation architecture problems and reimplementing the same
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required capabilities. Trick seeks to reliably accomplish this by automating
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the implementation of commonly needed simulation capabilities, and by automating
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the process of building the executable.
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---
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<a id=the-objective-of-this-tutorial></a>
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## The Objective of This Tutorial
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This tutorial covers the basic concepts for developing and operating Trick
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simulations. It assumes absolutely no previous knowledge of Trick, and
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should be self-contained, with no need for outside references other than maybe a
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C book, and/or a UNIX book. By the end of the tutorial you should know how to
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build a Trick simulation of your own from the ground up. The approach of this
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tutorial is hands-on.
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The intent here is not to teach about simulation math models, nor to teach about
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C programming, nor UNIX, but rather to teach about the Trick architecture and
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its capabilities.
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---
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<a id=installing-trick></a>
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## Installing Trick
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If Trick is not already installed on your machine, then you will need to do that
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first, by following the directions at: [Install Guide](/trick/documentation/install_guide/Install-Guide).
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The rest of the tutorial is written as if the Trick **bin** directory is
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available on your execution path. This isn't strictly necessary, but allows
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you to call `trick-CP` instead of `/full/path/to/trick/bin/trick-CP`. Follow
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the steps below if you would like to add the **bin** directory to your PATH.
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For the sake of example, let us assume that
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you installed Trick in your home directory, and you used the default name for
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the repository, which is **trick**. If you named it something different, then
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use that name instead in the scripts below.
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If you are using **bash or ksh**, then add the following lines to the file
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that is automatically sourced by your terminal. Based on your platform this
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could be **.profile, .bash_profile, .bashrc, .zshrc** or others. Google "How
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to edit PATH variable" on google to find a wealth of information on this
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subject.
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```bash
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export PATH=${PATH}:${HOME}/trick/bin
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```
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If you are using **csh** or **tcsh**, then add the following lines to your **.cshrc** file.
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```csh
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setenv PATH ${PATH}:${HOME}/trick/bin
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```
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Close and then re-open your terminal window.
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---
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[Next Page](ATutASimpleSim)
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