This article presents several diierent kinds of Petri nets, together with computer tools based on them, and compares possibilities of their application in the area of simulation and modelling. Place/transition Petri nets, stochastic Petri nets, hierarchical coloured Petri nets and nally object oriented Petri nets are mentioned here. As for the tools, Design/CPN, TimeNET, LOOPN++ and PNtalk are ...