RCE

DISTRIBUTED INTEGRATION ENVIRONMENT

Standalone tools can be integrated into RCE to build automated, executable workflows. Tools may run on different servers.

SIMULATION OF COMPLEX SYSTEMS

RCE helps engineers and scientists to analyze, optimize, and design complex systems like aircraft, ships, or satellites.

CONCURRENT ENGINEERING

Handling complex systems requires many experts and several tools. RCE is especially suited for multidisciplinary collaboration and concurrent engineering.

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 Twitter 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:

Latest software release: Jan Flink, Robert Mischke, David Wichter. RCE (Remote Component Environment) (Version 10.7.0). Zenodo (2025)
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17878323
The RCE software in general (always points at the latest release)
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3691674
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)
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.softx.2021.100759.

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

RCE 8.1

We just released RCE 8.1, which contains several new features and improvements. Here we present a selection of new features. Please see GitHub for the full changelog.

Workflow Editor

In RCE 8.1, bidirectional connections between components are now depicted by separate connection lines, which allows a better overview …

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RCE 8.0

We are proud to announce a new major release: RCE 8 - Red Snapper. It contains several new features and many improvements. Below is a selection of some of them. Please see GitHub for the full changelog.

Manual Verification of Tool Results

In collaborative workflows, the tools involved are contributed by …

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RCE 7.1

We recently released RCE 7.1, a new minor version with several new features and many improvements. Below is a selection of some features. Please see GitHub for the full changelog.

Unified Access to Documentation in RCE

Documentation of RCE is spread over different places: component documentation is accessible from …

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RCE 7

We are proud to announce RCE 7. A major release with a lot of features and various improvements. Below you find a selection of some features. Please see GitHub for the full changelog.

Remote Tool Access via SSH Connections

To access and execute tools across untrusted networks, we added support …

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Release 6.3.0

Synopsis

This release fixes a security issue; users that run components on untrusted machines should upgrade to 6.3.0 as soon as possible
Various minor bugfixes and improvements
Workflow Data Browser: Added icons to the top-level workflow entries that show the final state of workflows

Components

XML Merger: Added …

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Release 6.2.1

Synopsis

Fixed broken directory structure for files and directories, which are received as input values by the script component and by integrated tools
Removed reliably XSLT mapping files from working directories of integrated CPACS tools (in some cases they are left)
Endpoints can be deleted again even if they are …

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Release 6.2.0

Synopsis

Improved usability of various graphical user elements including log messages
Extended and improved the access of tools and workflows via SSH (remote access)
Fixed minor bugs
Internal improvements (e.g., improved quality assurance by increasing unit test coverage)

Usability

Script component
- Files and directories (received as input values) keep …

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Release 6.1.0

Workflow Components

Added new component: Switch
- Directs data on the base of a condition to one of two outputs
Added new component: Design of Experiments (DOE)
- Supports sampling of a bounded solution space
Converger: Replaced "maximum iterations" by "maximum convergence checks"
Parametric Study: Added option "fit to bounds"
Optimizer
- Added …

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Release 6.0.3

Reduced heap size (declared in rce.ini) for Windows 32bit version of RCE
Added configuration parameter for RCE profiles to the windows service installation script

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Release 6.0.2

Fixed tool integration wizard, which failed to integrate a tool under some certain circumstances
Converger and optimizer component sent value, whether the loop was converged/optimized on each iteration again (In 6.0.0 and 6.0.1, it was sent only once at the end as loop was converged …

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