Thats an oddly strange issue. I just tried it here and no issue. Maybe there is something wrong in your catkin_ws? Did you remove or compile something and gave error?
Could you do the following:
echo $ROS_PACKAGE_PATH
You should get this path:
/home/user/catkin_ws/src:/home/simulations/public_sim_ws/src:/opt/ros/kinetic/share
This allows the ros system to find all the packages.
Also, remove everything you have in the /home/user/catkin_ws/src, (EXCEPT for the Cmakelitsts.txt ) , andtry to do:
cd /homeUser/catkin_ws; rm -rf build devel; source /home/simulations/public_sim_ws/devel/setup.bash; catkin_make
This would reset the catkin_ws with its original state, just in case, something went wrong in the comilation.