Simulink: Simulating using from file block. Choosing a variable start point

Question

I have a control model in Simulink which consists of two blocks. One which takes some inputs and generates three signals, x,y,z as arrays (trajectory) and feeds them to the second block as reference for the control.

I would like to be able to run this using a recorded trajectory. I have simulated the trajectory (by running the simulation once) and written the data to a mat file (signals plus timestamp). I can remove the first block and feed the mat file to the second control block and it works fine.

The trajectory is a loop. My question is, I would like to be able to start the simulation at any point in the file and I am not familiar with how Simulink manages time. If I want to start from a different point what do I need to do and can I make it continuous so that if I start from point N-1 in the file it will proceed through N and back to 1,2,3 etc.

Thanks, Bryan

Answer 1

If you want to start at a different time point you won't be able to directly use the .mat file that you have created. You'll need to load the data into MATLAB and change the time vector so that t=0 corresponds to the data that you do want to start with.

Since you want to repeat the sequence, you most likely want to use the Repeating Sequence block. This would require you to load the data into MATLAB (and do the time alignment) anyway.