mosaiks are made of tesserae: GUI design for a co-simulation framework

Abstract

In a mosaic, a tessera is a single stone. We introduce tesserae for the co-simulation framework mosaik, where they are sets of entities. They allow for a visual, intuitive, and yet systematic description of simulation scenarios by allowing their entities to be created together and the entities of two tesserae to be connected simultaneously, while ensuring that multidirectional data-flow between tesserae remains consistent without further manual synchronization. We further present an extension of mosaik by a graphical user interface (GUI) based on these tesserae, enabling the drag-and-drop creation of co-simulation setups and their execution. The GUI aims to make mosaik more accessible to users previously excluded by its script-based nature. At the same time, it preserves mosaik's flexibility, extensibility, and modular architecture.