For many years, the battle cry of those fed up with the implementation of models in computer programs was modular modelling. If we had a modular modelling system, it was argued, then models could be easily constructed from a number of pre-programmed modules, and the effectiveness of the community as a whole would be greatly increased by the sharing of these modules, avoiding huge duplications of effort.
The submodel concept in Simile supports modular modelling. You can open up a separate window for a submodel (say, a vegetation submodel); clear the contents of the submodel (by doing File: New), then load a different vegetation model into the submodel window. Influence links with the rest of the model can then be made one by one.
Furthermore, Simile supports 'plug-and-play' modularity (which is what is normally meant by 'modular modelling'). If two or more vegetation submodels have been designed to share a common set of influences (in and out) with the rest of the model, then Simile the information about this interfacing to be stored in a file (an interface spec file). When you next load one of the submodels from a file, you simply refer to the interface spec file, and all the influence links are made in one quick operation.
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