PhysBeans Tutorial

PhysBeans is a free toolkit which simplifies the construction of applets for physical simulations. Based on the Java Beans framework, it contains a set of beans that allow to create such applets in a graphical way without the need to write explicit Java code. Additionally it contains a few templates that serve as starting points and considerably simplify the task to layout the elements of the graphical user interface.

The PhysBeans library can be used together with any Java IDE that supports Java Beans. The templates are provided for the free NetBeans IDE, which can be downloaded from www.netbeans.org. Their Java source code can be used anywhere, but the form files are specific to NetBeans. Similar templates could be easily created for other IDEs like JBuilder or Eclipse.

This tutorial is a translation of a chapter from the book cliXX PhysBeans (in German) translated by the author and used here by kind permission of the publisher Verlag Harri Deutsch. It demonstrates how to use PhysBeans by leading the reader through a complete example. It is based on NetBeans 5.5 that is used in the book, but a version for NetBeans 7.2 is supplied as well.

Contents (book version using NetBeans 5.5)

Contents (web version using NetBeans 7.2)