Designer™
The Designer is a state-of-the-art tool for designing state machines. The tree browser allows you to overview and navigate through your embedded project. All elements of the system are visible and accessible through the browser, and a double-click on the desired element brings up the appropriate configuration dialog box on the screen.
In the main window you create your state machine model using states, transitions, events, actions, initial states, variables, assignments, concurrent regions, unit states, history states, deep history states, guards, signals, parameters, entry, exit, and do reactions—according to the UML notation.
To give your state machine designs maximum clarity you have the option to individually color and size all drawing objects. This makes it possible to distinguish between for instance normal operation and error handling in your application.
The use of state machines enables a truly interactive and iterative working model where you begin with an outline of your application, and then step-by-step add functionality at a more detailed level. It is possible at any time to simulate the behavior of the model using the visualSTATE® Validator, and you can also create a prototype or target implementation whenever you want.
IAR visualSTATE is a set of highly sophisticated and easy-to-use development tools for designing, testing and implementing embedded applications based on state machines.
IAR visualSTATE creates a graphical overview of the application, with direct graphical feedback on various levels of detail. It allows you to outline your application and then step by step add functionality at a more detailed level. The system structure is represented with a high-level, hierarchical perspective that enables you to maintain the overview of complex applications.
IAR visualSTATE provides advanced verification and validation utilities and generates very compact C/C++ code that is 100 % consistent with your system design.
IAR visualSTATE is fully integrated with IAR Embedded Workbench® to enable true state machine debugging on hardware. The key components of IAR visualSTATE allow you to design, verify, validate, prototype and generate code for your application within a completely integrated environment. IAR Systems also provides a free-standing Viewer for IAR visualSTATE users. The Viewer can be used to view but not edit model files and can be copied freely for sharing and discussing designs with stake holders outside the development team.
Prototyping
The prototyping concept of visualSTATE® makes your communication with marketing and customers much easier. It will help you increase the awareness and knowledge of your product before it is launched. Your sales force and technical support staff will already be well acquainted with the product and able to introduce the product on the market rapidly.
Already at a very early stage of a development project it is possible to have marketers and customers try out the new product and give important feedback. This reduces the number of last-minute changes significantly. You will only have to do the design work once. The design model used in your prototype is the very same as the one used in your final product. Thanks to the unique technology in visualSTATE, your final product will behave in a way 100% identical to that of your prototype.
Together with visualSTATE you get an interface connector to Altia FacePlate and Altia Design, a drag and drop simulation graphics tool. With this interface connector, you can build your graphical prototype with Altia and with simple drag and drop connect the graphics to your visualSTATE design. In this way you can simulate and test your design together with a realistic graphical user interface.
And if you are only reasonably fluent in using a windowing library of your choice for your PC environment, you can easily create a mock version of the user interface using your favorite PC IDE. This user interface communicates with the state machine model in the same manner as your target hardware, while running both the user interface and the state machine model on the PC.