Data Extraction from SimBiology Simulations

What is the BEST way to get the simulation data out of simbiology and into excel or some other program?

I have found a brief explanation on how to export to Matlab area and then convert to XLS but its not working terrible well

[Anh-Dung Le]

I have matlab 2020a now and the simbiology that comes with it is slightly different 2018. However, you can export it to Matlab file and then view the data from there. My problem is the data size isn't large enough and I don't know to increase it. It gives me 70x1 (ie. 70 time units) and the simulations should give alot more if I'm going to export it into excel and use it another graphing platform. Does anyone know how to increase the data size for the simulation?

Answer 1

[Sietse Braakman]

Hi Andrew,

Assuming you are using the SimBiology app, you can do this by right-clicking on the simulation plot and selecting 'Export Data':

Then you can select to export directly to .xls:

If you want to export the data from a SimData object in the MATLAB workspace, you could use code along the lines of:

% make datanames suitable for use as variable names (replace all spaces by underscores)
datanames = tobj.DataNames;
datanames = replace(datanames,' ','_');
%create table from data array
dataTable = array2table(tobj.Data,'VariableNames',datanames);
% create table from time array
timeTable = array2table(tobj.Time,'VariableNames',{'Time'});
% concatenate time and data tables
exportTable = [timeTable dataTable];
% export to .xls file
writetable(exportTable,'exportData.xls')

Let me know how you get on.

[Andrew Heitman]

I actually dont have that third option to export directly to XLS

I am using Matlab 2018B -

UPDATE: Added screenshot of what I see when right-clicking on plot. I am using a mac

[Sietse Braakman]

Thanks for letting me know. Do you mean the third option in the right-click drop down ("Export Data...") or the third option to export to Excel in the dialog box ("Save data to Excel file:")?

[Andrew Heitman]

I updated with a screenshot - I mean the the third option in the dialog box

Answer 2

[Sietse Braakman]

It looks like you are on Mac OS - the export to Excel uses the function xlswrite, which unfortunately only works on Windows.

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/20058-help-with-xlswrite

So alas, you'll have to use some code to achieve this. You can use/adopt the code I wrote above. Whenever you simulate a model in your SimBiology task editor, the simulation data will be present in the MATLAB workspace and will be called 'tobj'. You should be able to use that code to write the tobj to an excel. Note that this code uses the writetable function, rather than xlswrite.

[micronaut]

doesn't work on R2018a running on Windows 10. No export to workspace or Excel.

[Sietse Braakman]

Could you give me more detail on what doesn't work? Is it the writing to excel with xlsread/writetable not working or is the 'Export data' functionality not working in the SimBiology task editor?