The NumLab Numerical Laboratory by

Abstract A large range of software environments addresses numerical simulation, interac-tive visualisation and computational steering. Most such environments are designed to cover a limited application domain, such as finite element or finite difference packages, symbolic or linear algebra computations or image processing. Their software structure rarely provides a simple and extensible mathematical model for the underlying mathematics. Thus, assem-bling numerical simulations from computational and visualisation blocks, as well as building such blocks is a difficult task for the researcher in numerical simulation. This paper presents the NUMLAB environment, a single numerical laboratory for compu-t.at.ional and visualisation applications. By closely reflecting the modelled mathematical concept.s int.o the software architecture, NUMLAB offers a basic, yet generic framework for a large class of computational applications, such as partial and ordinary differential equations, non-lineal ' systems, matrix computations and image and signal processing. Building applica-tions which combine interactive visualisation and computations is provided in a simple and interactive visual manner. We present several features of the NUMLAB approach, illustrated with some applications.