The use of automated transformation approaches based on model-driven principles and standards promises to be a significant enablcr of time, effort and cost savings in the Modeling and Simulation (M&S) field. This paper specifically addresses the distributed simulation (DS) domain, which allows to naturally cope with the ever growing complexity and distributed nature of modern systems. Unfortunately, the use of DS in a system development lifecycle can be a challenging issue due to the fact that: i) the use of DS frameworks and standards requires significant and specific technical skills system engineers are usually not familiar with; ii) the development of a DS is an effort-, time- demanding and error-prone activity. In this respect, this paper shows the benefits of using a model-driven transformation approach to the development of DS systems. Specifically, the paper presents and compares two main approaches, namely the conventional approach, based on a standard model- driven process, and an innovative approach that exploits the SimArch layered architecture. © 2016 Society for Modeling & Simulation International (SCS).