As shown in the ODTK Integration Diagram, ODTK supports two main types of plugins:
- ODTK Plugins - Extend and customize ODTK's computational abilities.
- UI Plugins - Extend and customize ODTK's user interface.
The plugin advantage
At first, one may think that writing a software component to achieve higher-fidelity modeling is too high a hill to climb. Certainly, the best situation would involve the software already incorporating the higher fidelity model to use. AGI is constantly improving its products by adding more fidelity and capability---but these features are mostly focused on providing generic capabilities that can be used by a wide customer base. Higher-fidelity models are by nature nongeneric and applicable to only a few customers.
Generally, the nongeneric portion of a model is narrow in scope. The larger portion can simply utilize existing generic models. Certainly, if the price to pay to incorporate a custom model requires reimplementation of all the generic capabilites as well, then you're creating a total custom software solution yourself — one that needs to be continually tested, maintained, validated, and upgraded to meet your changing needs.
The big advantage to using Plugins is the programming code you don't need to write. In contrast to writing all the code yourself, plugins work by implementing only the custom portion of a model and leveraging all of the generic capabilities provided by the plugin point. The only thing you need to program is the specific custom model itself, the part of the model that is most important to you.