Object oriented design of petri net simulator

Abstract

Petri nets are highly useful for modeling discrete event dynamic systems. The objective of this effort is to develop a tool for drawing, editing and simulating Petri nets using object oriented programming on a standard platform. The object oriented approach was chosen because of its code reuse and extendability features which simplify the task of adding features to the tool as the model evolves. The design stresses on modeling of the problem by objects which closely relate the system design with the implementation. C++ is used for implementing the object oriented design, and the XView toolkit is used for building the graphical editor in compliance with AT&T\u27s OPENLOOK standards on a Sun Sparc IPX running SunOS 4.1.2. The object oriented paradigm was successfully applied to develop a user friendly, graphical editor and a simulator for Petri nets