Creating a Model

In order to create a FLAME GPU 2 simulation, you must first describe the model.

What is a Model?

In FLAME GPU 2, a model is represented by a ModelDescription object, this contains information specifying the agents, messages and environment properties within the model and how they interact.

Once the ModelDescription has been completely described, it is used to construct either a CUDASimulation or CUDAEnsemble to execute simulations of the model.

Creating a ModelDescription Object

ModelDescription objects can be initialised directly, requiring only a single argument specifying the model’s name. Currently this name is only used to generate the default window title within the visualiser.

#include "flamegpu/flamegpu.h"

int main(int argc, const char **argv) {
    // Define a new FLAME GPU model
    flamegpu::ModelDescription model("My Model");
}

import pyflamegpu

# Define a new FLAME GPU model
model = pyflamegpu.ModelDescription("My Model")

The ModelDescription class has various methods for specifying components of the model, these are used to fully describe a model to be simulated.

Method	Returns
`Environment()`	`EnvironmentDescription`
`newAgent()`	`AgentDescription`
`newMessage()`	Specialised message description type, e.g. `MessageBruteForce::Description`, `MessageSpatial2D::Description`, etc
`newSubModel()`	`SubModelDescription`
`addInitFunction()`	n/a
`addStepFunction()`	n/a
`addExitFunction()`	n/a
`addExitCondition()`	n/a
`newLayer()`	`LayerDescription`

Note

newMessage() take a template argument, so it is called in the format newMessage<flamegpu::MessageBruteForce>(). As the Python API lacks templates, they are instead called in the format newMessageBruteForce().

The subsequent chapters of this guide explore their usage in greater detail.