1 Introduction

This manual describes the software package TimeNET (version 4), a graphical and interactive toolkit for modeling with stochastic Petri nets (SPNs) and stochastic colored Petri nets (SCPNs). TimeNET has been developed at the Real-Time Systems and Robotics group of Technische Universität Berlin, Germany (http://pdv.cs.tu-berlin.de/). The project has been motivated by the need for powerful software for the efficient evaluation of timed Petri nets with arbitrary firing delays. TimeNET and its predecessor DSPNexpress were influenced by experiences with other well-known Petri net tools, e.g., GreatSPN and SPNP. For the latest information about TimeNET, check the tool's home page at http://www.tu-ilmenau.de/TimeNET.

The manual describes the features and usage of the tool. The aim is to help the user to work with the tool without going into the details of its components. Additional publications are available which describe in particular the implemented evaluation techniques including their mathematical background. References are given in this manual. These papers are available upon request from the authors, or can be downloaded from their home pages.

Parts of this text are based on the TimeNET 3.0 [21] and TimeNET 2.0 manuals [14] as well as other material about TimeNET. An overview of older versions of the tool is given in references [8, 23, 18], while the current version has been announced in [20]. Background information about stochastic discrete event systems as well as a range of applications can be found in [22].