Aviation and aerospace systems are complex and concurrent and require special tools for their specification, verification, and performance evaluation. The tool in demand should be easily integrated into the standard loop of model-driven development. Colored Petri nets represent a combination of a Petri net graph and a functional programming language ML that makes it powerful and convenient tool for specification of real-life system and solving both tasks: correctness proof i.e. verification and performance evaluation. This chapter studies basic and advanced features of CPN Tools – a powerful modeling system which uses graphical language of colored Petri nets. Starting with a concept of colored hierarhical timed Petri net, it goes through declaration of color sets and functions to peculiarities of hierarchical design of complex models and specification of timed characteristics. The authors accomplish the chapter with a real-life case study of performance evaluation for switched Ethernet network.
