What is RCE?

RCE is an Open Source distributed, workflow-driven integration environment. It is used by engineers and scientists to design and simulate complex systems (e.g., aircraft, ships, or satellites) by using and integrating their own design and simulation tools.
An overview about RCE and some of its application fields gives this survey article.
If you're interested in contributing to RCE please don't hesitate and contact us. The source code is distributed as a zip archive along with each release. We will provide general public access to our source code repository soon.
Follow us on for latest news concerning releases, talks, related science etc. Check our YouTube channel for screen casts and other nice stuff concerning RCE.

Cite us

If you use RCE in your research project, please cite either the software itself or our reference publication in SoftwareX:

Brigitte Boden, Jan Flink, Niklas Först, Robert Mischke, Kathrin Schaffert, Alexander Weinert, Annika Wohlan, and Andreas Schreiber. "RCE: an integration environment for engineering and science." SoftwareX 15 (2021): 100759. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.softx.2021.100759.

Brigitte Boden, Jan Flink, Robert Mischke, Kathrin Schaffert, Alexander Weinert, Annika Wohlan, and Andreas Schreiber. (2019). RCE (10.0.0). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3691675.

You can obtain the preprint of the SoftwareX-article from arXiV.

Work with us

We are always open to working together with users to extend RCE and to apply it to new use cases. For this, we often participate in collaborative research projects. Please contact us at rce@dlr.de.

News

Release 5.0.0

Workflow components

  • Added an "Output Writer" component to write directories and files to the local file system
  • Optimizer
    • The iteration count is now available as an output
    • Added support for the Vector data type (to support multiple (hundreds) of design variables)
    • Added support for start values and optimal solution outputs …

Release 4.2.0

  • Added documentation for user and developer (see new documentation folder)
  • implemented IP whitelisting
  • implemented automatic network reconnect
  • made upload block size configurable (see user guide)
  • added service/daemon scripts including installation scripts
  • General tweaks and bugfixes

Release 4.1.0

  • Component connections can now be directly selected and deleted in the workflow editor (required using the connection dialog before)
  • Improved automatic behaviour when connecting components in the editor
  • Improved handling of special cases in data management browser
  • Running RCE instances can now be shutdown by running the executable again with …

Release 4.0.0

GUI

  • Added a wizard to simplify the creation of new workflows
  • Extended Network view
    • Workflow components are shown per node (for own node: locally installed and published ones; for remote nodes: published ones)
    • Connections to other nodes are shown
    • Connections to others can be managed (added, edited, deleted, started, stopped …

Release 3.2.0

Changelog

  • improved handling of long-lasting remote component initializations
  • fixed validation errors not showing up in log
  • fixed connection removal via Undo
  • workflows are properly disposed on shutdown now
  • improved default workspace locations of "launch" configurations
  • fixed double-click in read-only workflow view switching to properties view
  • changed behaviour of Script component …

Release 3.1.0

Changelog

  • Fixed bug regarding boolean values sent within a workflow (workflow components always retrieved 'false' even the previous component sent 'true')
  • Added support for workflow control from within scripts executed with the Script component again
  • GUI misc: mark GUI elements red if validation error exists (instead of yellow which is …

Release 3.0.0

Changelog

  • Added support for remote upload of large files
  • Unified data types of input values and output values which are used by workflow components (Note: all workflow files created with RCE < 3.0.0 will be updated by RCE when opening them for the first time)
  • Replace the Python workflow …

Release 2.5.1

Changelog

  • extended Converger component to add support for nested loops
  • added workflow status icons to workflow runtime tab
  • added support for macros to Excel component's export function
  • Excel component exports to clipboard with Excel-like insertion
  • fixed copying a workflow component in the workflow editor (the copied component had the same …