RCE enables engineers and scientists to construct automated workflows consisting of numerous such software tools, to execute these workflows on a distributed network of compute nodes, and to collect all relevant artifacts for further analysis Handling complex systems requires many experts and several tools for analysis, design, and simulation. Using RCE, these tools can be shared between team members and integrated into automated, executable workflows.

Since one of the main areas of application of RCE is the design and development of novel airplane configurations, there are a number of data formats and external tools used in this context that closely integrate with RCE. Furthermore, due to its nature as an open-source OSGi-based Java project, RCE has been the subject of a number of projects in the field of software analysis and visualization.

Here, we introduce and highlight some data formats software that RCE integrates with as well as projects that use RCE as the subject of their investigation. We are always open for new introductions to this list. If you have a tool, a project, or an integration of RCE that you would like to see here, please do not hesitate to contact us.

CPACS

The Common Parametric Aircraft Configuration Schema (CPACS) is a data format definition for the design and development of air transportation systems. This schema enables engineers to exchange information between their design tools. RCE provides special wrapping functionalities to simplify the integration of tools that use CPACS as their input or output format.

TiGL

The TiGL Geometry Library (TiGL) is an open source geometric library that generates a geometric representation of aircraft described in a CPACS file. This library includes the TiGL Viewer, an interactive user interface which can be used to inspect the constructed geometry. RCE can be configured to use the TiGL viewer to display geometries used in a workflow.

IslandViz

The Island Visualization (IslandViz) is a visualization tool for exploring modular software systems such as RCE in virtual reality. IslandViz represents every module as a distinct island on a virtual table. Users can then explore the module structure of RCE as well as the dependencies between the modules on multiple levels of granularity. That allows users to get a first overview about the complexity of an OSGi-based software system by interactively exploring its modules as well as the dependencies between them.