Aspen Plus simulating input data

For more sophisticated spreadsheet models, Aspen Plus allows the user to link a spreadsheet to a simulation via a user model known as a USER block. The designer can create a new spreadsheet or customize an existing spreadsheet to interact with an Aspen Plus simulation. The USER block is much easier to manipulate when handling large amounts of input and output data, such as streams with many components or unit operations that involve multiple streams. The procedure for setting up a USER MS Excel model is more complex than using a calculator block but avoids having to... 

Aspen Plus simulation is now activated from VBA. After the convergence of process simulation, values of energy input for feed heater, columns 2 and 3 reboiler duty, and flow rates of all three product streams are transferred from the simulator to cells C3 to C8 in Excel worksheet named Data from Aspen Plus . VBA code for these variables and/or data transfer is given in Figure 4.B.2... 

The call back queries used in these steps are not purely queries to source databases. For example, the needed simulation results of the reactor are results of an aggregation function. In this sense the results are the results of a (highly complex) query on the data warehouse store. As simulating is a time consuming and expensive task we also store the results in the data warehouse for reuse. To gain access to the units the DB trader contains meta information about the CAPE-OPEN components. As a result of the usage of the CAPE-OPEN compliant units we do not need to handle very different simulators such as Aspen Plus, Pro/II or gPROMS, but only have to create the CAPE-OPEN objects used by the units. This especially concerns the material object for each substance contained in the input ports of the unit. The process data warehouse produces these CORBA objects and is then able to start the simulation of the unit. 

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