Hirschmann Car Communication is a leading German supplier of transmitter and receiver systems. The company has long based its systems development on Enterprise Architect. Now, in a preliminary project for a remote tuner, LieberLieber Embedded Engineer is being used to generate executable source code from their UML system model. Hirschman Car Communication employs 140 engineers in the areas of industrial engineering, development and design, and measurement and test engineering. Dennis Drews is a software engineer at Hirschmann: “A colleague recommended LieberLieber Embedded Engineer to us, which we thoroughly tested and then presented internally. Today I would say that if you’re using Enterprise Architect, you should also be using LieberLieber products. Embedded Engineer has proved to be a high-quality tool and has faultlessly generated running software from the model.” Developers used LieberLieber’s help website and email support. “We quickly developed the two state machines in C and optimized the model in such detail that we did not have to dive into the automatically-generated code! This is an ideal condition for us, which we were able to achieve thanks to LieberLieber’s excellent tool,” Drews concludes. “We are very proud to have Hirschmann Car Communication, one of the leading providers in the automotive supplier industry, among our customers. The fact that our Embedded Engineer tool was able to meet the high quality requirements in this project reinforces us in our own drive to meet such high levels of quality. In order to create innovative products one also needs excellent tools, which we are constantly working to improve,” explains Daniel Siegl, CEO at LieberLieber. Disruptive technology ensures competitive edge The remote tuner modules are a disruptive technology for Hirschmann Car Communication: They move the receiver technology closer to the antenna from the head unit, thus making an additional amplifier unnecessary. The digital transmission is then no longer via several, expensive co-axial cables, but via a single, cost-effective cable. “As a leading manufacturer, we want to introduce such disruptive technologies as quickly as possible, even if they change the current way of doing business. In our field, technical advancement gives us a key competitive edge that distinguishes us from our competitors. We must always be ready to enter new territory,” explains Thomas Adam, Head of Technology & Innovation. In order to be able to hold this decisive market advantage, developers are of course glad to support development of the best tools available on the market. At the beginning of the project, when software code requirements were higher than what could directly be achieved with Enterprise Architect, Drews was pleased to learn of LieberLieber Embedded Engineer: “If we want to keep our lead, then we also have to continuously optimize our tools. In addition, our high quality requirements dictate that we must know our tools very well, and also exploit the possibilities within them. It is our desire to live quality in all areas and Embedded Engineer provides excellent support for us in this domain.” The positive experiences from the preliminary design phase have now been passed on to serial production, where the next steps for the production of the remote tuner modules will now be initiated. See a demonstration video here:

Following exhaustive tests, the renowned construction industry supplier Hilti decided on LieberLieber’s Embedded Engineer for Embedded Systems for Enterprise Architect. Vienna/Kaufering next Munich – Following exhaustive tests, the renowned construction industry supplier Hilti decided on LieberLieber’s Embedded Engineer for Enterprise Architect. Roman Bretz, CTO of LieberLieber Software: “We are proud that we could convince the Hilti development team of the benefits of our Code Generator after a one-year pilot phase. This confirms that we can also generate UML models from complex code which suits the very high requirements of the embedded industry. Moreover, our approach allows already existing code to be integrated without a problem – which is decisive for entering running projects.” As a partner of Sparx Systems, LieberLieber creates solutions for the optimized, user-friendly implementation of the popular UML modeling tool Enterprise Architect, used by over 300,000 users world-wide. LieberLieber Embedded Engineer is especially aimed at embedded software developers and software architects in the area of Embedded Systems, but can also be useful for testers and integration managers. The solution enables code generation from UML structures, state machines and activity models, and creates platform-independent C++ and MISRA-conform C-Code from UML models. Big test, big benefits Hilti supplies the construction industry globally with technologically-leading products, systems and services, and employs around 21,000 associates in more than 120 countries. Software for electrical power tools is developed at the Kaufering development center. Dr.-Ing. Michael Fuchs, Software, Electronics & Drives Department, who lead the LieberLieber Codegenerator implementation project: “Due to its brilliant cost/performance ration, Enterprise Architect has been successfuly implemented at the Hilti headquarters in Liechtenstein, however without code generation. Therefore, in close collaboration with LieberLieber and with the assistance of a student trainee, we have begun to closely examine the code generator and adapt it to our specifications. The goal of this totally new approach has been to further improve the quality and productivity of our developments. Our project expectations have been surpassed and we have been able to clearly achieve all goals!” All guidelines met The topic of code generation has occupied Hilti developers for several years, therefore everyone is happy to finally have found a suitable solution in LieberLieber uml2Code. One of the key conditions for the selection of LieberLieber Embedded Engineer has been that it cannot presuppose any special requirements (such as a framework). Already-existing code should continue to be useable, and taken over into the entire solution problem-free. In addition, the Generator must also be open for company-specific adaptations. “When implementing other code generators, these requirements were not fulfilled. Therefore, it soon became clear that the approach of LieberLieber was very practical and promising for us,” highlights Fuchs. The student trainee implemented company-specific adaptations in close cooperation with LieberLieber. Such a project also naturally implies a certain learning curve: “Since during code generation activity diagrams and state machines play the greater roles, the internal learning curve can be reduced to one week. After this time, our developers can already model on their own and generate runnable code – another very positive surprise,” concludes Fuchs. As a next step, a suitable debugging solution is being developed with LieberLieber partner iSYSTEM to complete the code generation. Photo: Hilti Corporation