On August 12, 2016, Intelligen, Inc. sent a request for consultancy services to CO-LaN within the call for requests opened till August 31, 2016.
Intetligen, Inc. was requesting CO-LaN to provide them with sample code that would demonstrate the implementation of the functionality of loading and running external Unit Operations through the COM interface library, according to the CAPE-OPEN standards. Sample code should be able to call external Unit Operation models written in Microsoft Excel, MatLab, SciLab, or any Microsoft Windows based programming languages such as C++, C# or Visual Basic. This initial request was approved for funding by the Management Board on October 4, 2016. Since the request was made only for sample code, the budget allocated was only of 20 man-hours.
Through subsequent discussions with Intelligen, the initial request was amended and a revised scope for the consultancy action was developed. On September 12, 2017, CO-LaN’s Management Board has agreed to finance this action up to 80 man-hours. The consultancy service will be delivered by AmsterCHEM and will consist of:
- a stand-alone Unit Operation socket, used as a DLL, capable to enumerate Unit Operations, instantiate a Unit Operation, connect/disconnect Material Objects to Ports, etc…
- a driver application (command line type) that serves for testing and demonstrating how to implement the same in SuperPro Designer.
- an implementation of the Thermo socket based on the Ideal Gas example by CO-LaN. Will show Intelligen how to provide their own thermo to the socket
All these items will be generic and will be made available as open source to other organizations having similar objectives to Intelligen. The target for delivery is December 31, 2017.
Through this decision CO-LaN’s Management Board wants to widen and support the CAPE-OPEN community as well as to get software developers actively involved in developing their own CAPE-OPEN sockets and plugs.