Skip to Main Content Skip to Search
Product Documentation

Populating a Model

About the Library Browser

Simulink provides the Simulink Library Browser, which you can use to browse, search, and clone blocks from built-in and user libraries to your model. This section summarizes the techniques for using the Library Browser. For additional details, see Library Browser. For information about creating your own libraries and adding them to the Library Browser, see Working with Block Libraries.

Opening the Library Browser

To open the Simulink Library Browser, do one of the following:

If you have not already loaded Simulink, a short delay occurs while it loads. The Library Browser opens.

To keep the Library Browser above all other windows on your desktop, select the Pushpin button on the browser's toolbar.

Browsing Block Libraries

The Libraries pane on the left shows displays a tree-structured folder of the block libraries installed on your system. Initially the Simulink library is selected and its top level is open. You can scroll the pane and expand and collapse libraries and sublibraries to see what libraries are installed on your system and what blocks they contain.

The contents of the library selected in the Libraries pane appear in the Library tab to the right of the pane. The contents can be sublibraries, blocks, or a mixture of the two. Each member of the selected library is represented by an icon and a name. A library's icon suggests the purpose of the library. A block's library icon is the same as the block's icon when cloned into a model.

You can open a sublibrary by either selecting it in the Libraries pane or double-clicking it in the Library tab. To see a block's Block parameters dialog, double-click the block in the Library tab. To get Help for a block, right-click it and select Help from its context menu. The Help text, and the context menu itself, are the same that would appear if you right-clicked an instance of that block in a model.

Searching Block Libraries

To search for library blocks whose names contain a specified character string:

  1. Enter the character string in the text field of the Library Browser's Search field.

  2. Press Return or click the tool's Search button.

The browser searches all libraries for blocks whose names match the specified string and displays the results in the Library Browser's Found pane. The pane shows the blocks from each library separately.

By default, the search finds any substring and is not case-sensitive. You can change these defaults, or enable use of MATLAB regular expressions in the Search field, by clicking the Library Browser Options button and selecting appropriate commands. You can work with blocks found by Search just as you could with blocks found by selecting a library.

Cloning Blocks to Models

To copy a block from the Library Browser into a model, drag and drop the library block into the model window at the location where you want to create the copy. Simulink copies the block to the model at the point you selected. The resulting block retains a link to its library, so that updates to the source library automatically propagate to all copies. See Working with Block Libraries for information about library links.

  


Related Products & Applications

Learn more about Simulink through this collection of videos, articles, technical literature and the Getting Started with Simulink Guide.

 © 1984-2012- The MathWorks, Inc.    -   Site Help   -   Patents   -   Trademarks   -   Privacy Policy   -   Preventing Piracy   -   RSS