Why are the Corners Shaded in the Model Reference Block?

Consider the block diagram at this doc link for model referencing.

Why are the corner triangles shaded in the block for Counter C, but not for Counter A nor Counter B?

What do those shaded corner triangles indicate?

Answer 1

[madhan ravi]

https://in.mathworks.com/help/simulink/slref/visualizing-model-reference-architectures.html when SimulationMode is in Accelerator mode then it's corners are shaded. Wish it was easier to find in the doc, took a while to discover.

https://in.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/304889-reference-model-with-filled-corners

[Paul]

Never in a millenium would I have found that doc page. I think you're on the right track, but that page does not explicitly say that's what the shaded corners mean; at least I didn't see anything to that effect.

I have a model that has two Model blocks that reference the same model. Both Model blocks are set to Normal, but one of them has the gray shaded corners. At first, I thought there might be some rule that I vaguely remembered that only one Model block that references the same model can be Normal and all the others have to be Accelerator. The linked doc page in my question shows three Model blocks all referencing the same model (sldemo_mdlref_counter) and Counter A and Counter B are Normal and both have no corner shading, and Counter C is set to Accelerator and has black corners. BUT, Counter B turns to gray corners after an Update of the model. So maybe there is a rule that only one Model block (referencing the same model) can be Normal, and any other that is set to Normal becomes Accelerator and indicated by gray corners, whereas Model blocks explicitly set to Accelerator are indicated by black corners?

I'm still not sure what's going on ....

[Paul]

For some reason I can't edit the preceding comment ....

Anyway, I explicitly set one of the Model blocks in my simulation to Accelerator, the corners are black, and then the Update generated the accelerator target. But no target was generated when all I saw was gray corners.

So I'm still not sure what's going on ...

[Paul]

This link states "For accelerator mode, the corner triangles are filled in. For SIL and PIL modes, the corners are filled in and the word (SIL) or (PIL) appears on the block icon."

Still haven't figured out the difference between gray and black shaded corners ....

[madhan ravi]

Not sure what you mean by greyed out

[Paul]

Here is the Simulink demo sldemo_mdlref_basic with sample time overlay turned off after a model update:

Counter A and Counter B are both set to Normal and Counter C is set to Accelerator. If Counter B is Normal, why are the corner triangles shaded? The corner triangles on Counter B are a lighter shade than on Counter C.

[madhan ravi]

I’m not aware of sample time overlay. Could you please describe what it is or share a link?

[Paul]

It's on the Debug->Information Overlays menu. Sample times of signals and blocks can be shown in colors or text or both: View Sample Time Information - MATLAB & Simulink (mathworks.com)

[madhan ravi]

I don't see it being greyed out when i tried the example and hence I cannot answer your question why it"s greyed out. The Sample Time Overlay didn't turn off for me. Using 2023b version by the way , you use 2014 version from the screenshot. I suppose it might be due to the version difference?

[Paul]

That is odd. I was using 2022a (or maybe 2022b). Looks like the Sample Time Overlays are turned off in your case, otherwise you'd see all the blocks and lines in various colors for the sample times, assuming you did a model Update before posting. Based on the copyright notice, I wonder if something changed in sldemo_mdlref_basic in your version compared to mine. Can you verify that CounterB simulation mode is set to Normal and CounterC is set to Accelerator?

[Paul]

Simulate Multiple Referenced Model Instances in Normal Mode explains the gray corners.

[madhan ravi]

I turned on Sample time overlays on after posting the screenshot and I was seeing each block in various Color’s according to their sample time. Yes, simulation modes for CounterB and CounterC are in normal and accelerator mode respectively in the given example but I changed the CounterB mode to accelerator mode when posting the screenshot.

Thank you for the link!