Name: Mark Eric C.

Andam
EE 179.1 Section: H456
4:00

Course and Year: BS ECE IV

Laboratory Schedule: Thursday 1:00 -

Activity 1: Introduction to SCILAB

Abstract
This laboratory activity is an overview of the Scilab program. The students are
introduced to the Scilab for them to be familiarize with its environment. Students
are also presented with activities that helps them learn the basic features and
commands of the program.
The lab activities include the basics such as the proper use of variables, strings
and arrays, the use of operations and manipulation of matrices, matrix and
element-wise matrix multiplication, and creating functions in Scinotes. There is also
an activity that will let them create a program with a given condition for them to
practice what they have learned.
At the end of the activity, students are expected to have familiarize the Scilab
environment and learned how to use its basic features.

1 Objectives

To introduce students to a mathematical software that can be used to

simulate control systems.

2 List of equipment/software

Personal Computer
Installation of SCILAB

3 SCILAB Environment and Features Overview

Scilab is a free and open-source mathematical software. It can be used to simulate
mathematical applications from basic to advanced engineering systems.
Simulations can be through set of commands entered in the interactive command,
through a script written in the SciNotes, or through XCOS. XCOS is Scilabs
counterpart for Matlabs Simulink.
For this activity, you will be introduced to the basic command line interface as well
as scripting of a set of commands in SciNotes. Some basic features of Scilab such as
variable declarations, operations and flow control will be examined in this activity.
Some commonly used functions will also be introduced.

Name: Mark Eric C. Andam

EE 179.1 Section: H456
4:00

Course and Year: BS ECE IV

Laboratory Schedule: Thursday 1:00 -

3.1 Variable
In Scilab, you can easily create and instantiate variables anytime. Unlike the C
language, Scilabs variables are dynamic and dont have to be created before they
are stored with values.
Open you Scilab now and try the following in the console.
--> clear
--> a = 1
The console should respond with the value of a. Now, after the above command, try
doing the following:
--> b = a
The console should respond with the value of b which is just the value of a in the
previous command.
1. How about this one?
--> b = aaa
What will be the response of the console?

Since aaa has not been assigned a value yet, it still does not exist.
Another convenient feature of Scilab is that you can assign any datatype to a
variable even after you had previously assigned a different datatype. For example:
--> b = 1
--> b = Hi, this is a string
--> b = [this,is, a, vector/array]
These commands will not produce an error. The datatype of the variables in Scilab
adapt to whatever value you store in it.
You may have noticed that the last command is an array. Arrays in Scilab are values
enclosed in [ and ] with values separated by spaces or commas. You can also
create a matrix by separating rows with a semicolon.
--> an_array = [1, 3, 4]
--> a_matrix = [1, 2; 4, 5]
2. What will you enter in the command line if you want to assign a_matrix

with

[ ]
1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9

Name: Mark Eric C. Andam

Course and Year: BS ECE IV
EE 179.1 Section: H456
Laboratory Schedule: Thursday 1:00 4:00
You can easily declare an array of sequence of numbers using :
--> 1:10
// returns an array of numbers from 1 to 10 with an
interval of 1
--> 1:2:10
// returns an array of numbers from 1 to 10 with an
interval of 2
3.1.1 Polynomial
You can easily create polynomial using the poly function read the help file for
different methods of using the poly function. The simplest way is the following:
--> s= poly(0,s)

//this assign polynomial s^1 to the variable s.

Now you can manipulate this variable similar to number.

3. Write the result of (s^2+2*s+1)/(s+1) as shown in the console.

3.2 Operators
Scilab has a lot of operators in addition to basic arithmetic operations. Since Scilab
operates on matrices by default, basic arithmetic operations are applied on
matrices.
Operat
or
+
*
/
\
^

Description
Matrix addition
Matrix subtraction
Matrix Multiplication
Matrix division.

A / B= AB1

Matrix back-division.

A = A1B

Matrix exponential.
Transpose

If you want element-wise operation using those operators, the operator is preceded
with a .
--> a = [1, 2; 3, 4]
--> b = [3, 4; 5, 6]
--> a + b
ans =
4.
6.
8.
10.

Name: Mark Eric C. Andam

Course and Year: BS ECE IV
EE 179.1 Section: H456
Laboratory Schedule: Thursday 1:00 4:00
4. Do a matrix multiplication and element-wise multiplication on a and b.
What are the results? Are the results equal?
5. What is the result of a?
Accessing an element in an array or matrix is by calling the variable with a
parenthesis. For example, to access the 1st element of b:
--> b(1) //this will return 3. Matrix b is treated as a vector reading
top to bottom starting from the left.
This is the same as
--> b(1,1) //accessing element in column 1 row 1. First index is for
the row, the second is for the column.
You can use the $ to indicate the index of the last element.
--> b(1,$) //returns the last element of the first row.
Sub-matrices can be extracted by putting an array or matrix as index. The content
of the matrix index will be the rows/columns that will be included in the sub-matrix.
You can use : to include all elements on that row/column.
--> c = [1, 2 ,3; 4, 5, 6; 7, 8, 9]
--> d = c([1,3],[1,2])
ans =
1.
2.
3.
8.
--> e = c(:,1) //returns all the rows in the first column.
6. What is the result of c(1:3,$)?

3.3 Flow Control

The flow control in Scilab can be done with if then/else statements, select/case ,
return, for loop, do and while loops. In addition, keywords such as break, continue,
pause, abort are also useable to alter the flow of a set of Scilab commands. The
syntax for this is in described in detailed in the Help menu of Scilab. To access the
Help, type help in the command line or click the help button in the menu bar.

3.4 Functions in Scilab

You can create a reuseable set of commands as a function in Scilab. The basic
syntax is the following:
FUNCTION [y1,, yn]= functionname(x1, , xm)
//some statements or commands here

Name: Mark Eric C. Andam

EE 179.1 Section: H456
4:00
ENDFUNCTION

Course and Year: BS ECE IV

Laboratory Schedule: Thursday 1:00 -

3.4.1 Some of the commonly used functions in Scilab

Refer to the Help menu for details
1. plot used to plot expressions in Scilab.
2. poly function to create a polynomial.
3. roots Solve the roots of a polynomial
4. coeff extract the coefficients of a polynomial.
5. evstr - evaluate a string of Scilab statements or commands
6. csim Simulation of a linear system. (time response)
7. ones Generate a matrix of ones
8. zeros Generate a matrix of zeroes
9. rand generate a matrix of random values
10.eye generate an identity matrix.
11.inv inverse of a matrix
12.diag extract the diagonal of matrix
13.abs absolute value
14.real, imag, complex for complex numbers
15.conj conjugate of a complex
16.pfss partial fraction expansion of a give transfer function
17.syslin system linear definition
18.ss2tf State-space representation to transfer function conversion
19.tf2ss Transfer function to state-space representation
20.ssrand random system generator.

3.5 Batch Commands or Scripting

Scilab has an integrated text editor called SciNotes for creating and editing Scilab
scripts. A set of commands or statements can be written in a Scilab script that can
be ran or executed in a single action. SciNotes has some advance text editing
functionalities for coding like parenthesis matching and syntax highlighting. Open
Scinote by clicking the notebook icon below the menu bar.
After opening the SciNotes, do the following:
7. Write the following in the editor:
a = [0:0.1:2*%pi]
b = this is executed after a=1
plot(a,sin(2*a))
//end
What is the result or the behavior of the above statements in the console
after executing the script?

8. Write a function called myfunct that accepts two parameters A and B.

The function will return the result of (A+B)*B. Execute the script what is
the result?

Name: Mark Eric C. Andam

Course and Year: BS ECE IV
EE 179.1 Section: H456
Laboratory Schedule: Thursday 1:00 4:00
9. Call the function you created in #8 and pass as parameters the values 3
and 9. What is the result?
10. What will your function return if the parameters are [1,2,3] and [4;
6;7]?
11. How about [1, 2, 3 ; 3, 5, 1; 5 6 -1] and [3, -1, 4 ; -3, 5, 1; -5 6 -1]?
12. Do you have to re-execute your function from SciNotes? Why?

Name: Mark Eric C. Andam

EE 179.1 Section: H456
4:00

Course and Year: BS ECE IV

Laboratory Schedule: Thursday 1:00 -

3.6 Answers to Questions

1.

Since no value is assigned to variable aaa, the console

returned undefined variable

2.

3.

4.

No, the results are not equal. Matrix

multiplication performs a dot product of the
two
matrix;
Element-wise
multiplication
multiplies the values of the first matrix to the
corresponding values in the second matrix.

Name: Mark Eric C. Andam

EE 179.1 Section: H456
4:00
5.

6.

7.

Course and Year: BS ECE IV

Laboratory Schedule: Thursday 1:00 -

Name: Mark Eric C. Andam

EE 179.1 Section: H456
4:00
8.

Course and Year: BS ECE IV

Laboratory Schedule: Thursday 1:00 -

Since there are no errors found from the code, after

executing, Scilab accepted and compiled it. The code is now
ready to be called.
9.

10.

The code encountered an error after passing the two

parameters. The two parameters are not compatible thus it
is unable to perform any operations. The console returned
Inconsistent addition.
11.

12.

No, there is no need to re-execute the code once it is

executed the first time. Unless the Scilab program is closed
or the execution was unsuccessful or the console was
cleared, then you can call the function freely.

Name: Mark Eric C. Andam

EE 179.1 Section: H456
4:00

Course and Year: BS ECE IV

Laboratory Schedule: Thursday 1:00 -

4 Conclusion
Scilab is a very suitable mathematical software that can simulate
mathematical applications from simple to advanced engineering systems.
Variables and Arrays in Scilab are dynamic and are easily assigned different
values. Matrices in Scilab are flexible and can easily be manipulated. It is also
possible to plot curves in this program. Simulations can be run through a set
of commands in the command line, through a script written in the SciNotes. In
the Scinotes editor, one can create various functions according to the given
conditions of the user and be able to incorporate and execute that function to
the Scilab.
All in all, Scilab is a very helpful program especially in engineering. It is very
complex in its own, it can handle complicated equations and systems and
even perform graph plotting, yet it can easily be learned due to its user
friendly.