ContactIs it possible to run my simulation without any hardware?
Yes it is. You can simulate an entire vehicle network in CANoe without connecting to a single piece of external hardware. However, you will still need to have your licensed hardware (CANcardXL/CANcaseXL) installed.
This is done by changing the channel assignments for CANoe in the Vector Hardware Config tool in your Windows Control Panel. By moving the CANoe CAN channels from your real hardware to the Virtual CAN channels, your simulation will run entirely on your PC with no contact to any physical hardware.
More information can be found in the section: Assigning Software Channels to Hardware.
What are the different bus modes in CANoe, and how do they work?
The Slave Mode is a special simulation mode in which the time response of the measurement (time basis) is controlled by an external program. A typical application is control of the measurement by a master program which accesses the CANoe Simulation Object via COM.
Simulation mode
Even without a real bus CANoe can still be operated in Simulation mode. Bus access (transmission and receiving of messages) is simulated in the process. An animation factor can be specified in Simulation mode. The (simulated) measurement then appears slowed-down by this factor. For simulation factors between zero and one the simulation is accelerated accordingly. (For example, if the value 0.1 is entered the measurement is accelerated by a factor of 10.) The animation factor is changed in the CANoe options, by clicking Configuration > Options.
Using the supplemental icons 
and 
that appear on the toolbar, the simulation can be resumed for a defined period of time or stop a running simulation at any desired point in time. The length of the time step is defined in the edit control to the right of the icons; entries are made in milliseconds.
If operating CANoe in simulation mode, i.e. without a physical bus, then the functionality of the CAN chip on the interface card is emulated by the program. In this mode, the only system parameter definable in the card's configuration dialog is the baud rate of the bus. The values of other card parameters do not have any effect on the program run in this case. With small animation factors a high baud rate can - under some circumstances - result in the time resolution of the chip emulator being insufficient. Then an error report is generated, in which CANoe displays the smallest possible animation factor. To run the simulation in real time (animation factor 1) in spite of this, reduce the baud rate in the card's configuration dialog. However, this will change system characteristics such as latency times of certain messages under conditions of high bus loading.
- The animation factor means that after nnn ms the next event will be read from the source file.
- The readout of the events is independent of the stored timestamps.
- The timestamps of the source file are displayed in the Trace Window.
- Only positive integers can be entered.