A simulation and verification method is proposed to fully verify complex automatic test systems in the early design stage in order to accelerate their maturity and reduce R&D costs. The method extends and improves the discrete event system specification, introduces ports and fault modes in atomic models, constructs a coupling model through connections between ports, proposes a discrete signal event-driven simulation scheduling algorithm, and provides a C/S architecture scheme that supports remote interaction. Based on a self-developed automatic test system software platform (SCATS), experiments were carried out for both an example system and a real system. The results show that the proposed model and method support the multi-resolution hierarchical modeling for complex systems, and the simulation has high consistency and efficiency, which meets the requirements of automatic test system simulation and verification applications.