Crane Library - Bridge and Underhung bridge cranes

[gtwirth]

Attached is V5 of the Crane Library. This version was developed in Simio 6.97.

The new features in this version are:

- Cranes now have a home node and an initial node. This enables the crane to be positioned at a different location at the start of the simulation run than the location where it resides when the crane is idle.
- Cranes now have a home bridge that is different from the associated bridge. The associated bridge is used with the crane is initialized. The home bridge is the bridge where the crane resides when the crane is idle.
- The Math.EPSILON delay is no longer needed for the first entity arrival.
- Additional bay symbol. By default, the bay uses a symbol that is opaque (grey). If symbol index 1 is used (e.g. Current Symbol Index = 1 on the bay), the bay is transparent. The transparent bay is helpful if you wish to see schematics placed on the floor of the model.

Additional, the following Simio V6 features has enhance our ability to model cranes.

- You are able to turn off the Entity Instances at runtime. This is an option under the “Visibility” tab. With this option turned-off, the entity instances (including transporters) used to configure the model during design time, will not be shown when the model is run.
- Entities now have a property for “Dynamic Label Text” under the “Animation” property group. This property enables a string expression to be added to any entity that will be shown during runtime. In the example, we are showing the current entity riding on the crane. The expression is “Math.If (Crane.RideStation.Contents.NumberWaiting > 0, Crane.RideStation.Contents.LastItem.ModelEntity.Name, "Nothing")”

CraneLibraryV5.png (144.78 KiB) Viewed 16762 times

Note the following file is obsolete and has been updated in later posts below. (7/24/14)

[qvheerden]

Hi Glen,

We have been using the Crane Library of early 2013 in our model and it worked fine until all of a sudden we received this message:
Requesting seize of resource(s) in behalf of owner 'Crane7[1]'.
Object 'Crane7[1]' seized '1' capacity unit(s) of resource 'Crane6[1]'.

Issue 1: Crane 6 then also stalled and did not transport any entities for the remainder of the simulation.

We tried the Cranes V5 library and now we get the following issues too:

Issue 2: Home node property was not specified. This seems to be an issue before run time. All the Cranes' home nodes are specified in the model. See screenshot.

Crane_HomeNode.JPG (29.54 KiB) Viewed 16463 times

Issue 3: Inside the Crane process "MoveCraneToNode", the "OwnsCrossAisleZone" step throws an error as per the 2nd screenshot.

Crane_OwnsCrossAisle.JPG (29.43 KiB) Viewed 16463 times

We didn't have these issues in the older library. Do you have any idea what could be causing any of these 3 errors?

Regards,
Quintin

[robinwstebbins]

I created a new simple model with a single crane bay and get the same issue 3 error message about exceeding the value for the OwnsCrossAisleZone in the V5 library, but building the model in V4 does work. V5 seems to have some cool new features, so any help in getting it to work would be great. I ran the test models in Simio Team version 6.102.11054.

[dsturrock]

We are looking at this problem and will report back as soon as we find the problem.
In the mean time, if you have any real or small sample models that illustrate the problem, please post or email to me.
Thanks.

[ncollins]

Attached is an updated Crane Library that addresses the recently reported issue with the single crane bay. This library is for use with Simio 6.106. Please let us know if you find any additional issues with this library.

[Michal]

Hi All,

I am testing the new crane library (V6) in a small model with 1 bay and 3 bridges with cranes in it. See the model attached.

It works well for a short while but then it gets stuck because of a deadlock.

is there an easy way to resolve the deadlock in this model?

Thanks for help
Michal

[gtwirth]

Based on a number of issues reported to the Crane library, we are providing this update - (Simio v 6.106 or higher needed)

The fixes include:

1 - Added a fix to the push idle bridge logic. There were cases when the idle bridge could be moved where the logic was saying it could not. This fix removed a number of deadlock issues.
2 - Add re-plan of all cranes within a bay after each crane is unloaded. This change will improve the crane selection logic to reevaluated after each crane has completed a move. Since the selection logic is being reevaluate more often, the cranes should be better utilized.
3 - Exposed "Initial Number In System" properties on the bridge and crane objects. With is property exposed, it is possibly to disable bridges and cranes by setting this property = 0.

CraneLibraryV6.106.zip

(2.09 MiB) Downloaded 615 times

[gtwirth]

Hi...Just upgraded to Simio Version 7.128...No new functionality...It is just the latest library with the latest release.

[gtwirth]

Updated Crane Library and Crane Library Example to Simio 8.

Added fire of Bay.ZoneStatusChanged event in Crane.OnEnteredFreeSpace process. Used to relieve deadlock condition.

2015-12-17 - Fixed spelling of "Assoicated Bay" category name on the Bay object. Also, updated example and documentation.

[GSanchez]

Hi, I am working in a model with 2 cranes in 1 bay, and they normaly work each on one half of the bay (left and right) but sometimes the crane that works on the left has to go all the way to the right of the bay, and also the other way, the crane that normally works on the right side of the bay has to go all the way to the left side.

My first problem was that the right side crane wouldnt let the other one into her "territory" until all stars aligned, even if it was not busy, so i added logic to solve this problem and every thing is working well. But, it comes a time when I get a "Destination undefined." warning even when it has a valid node to go to, proven by many other entities that passed and moved the crane to that node.

And, all this explanations fail to be of use after all, because when I changed a little thing to the cranes (the idle action up position to false) I had the same warning in another completely different node that had nothing to do with the first problem.
We traced the activities of the crane and came up with a coincidence, the crane and the lift cancel their up movement for some reason, and this happens every time we get the warning.
Are we doing something wrong? Can you help us?

We would really appreciate it

[kiminga]

Is the Crane Library v8 from 2015 the latest version of the crane library?

[dsturrock]

Yes, I believe it is.

If you do not need the "underhung" ability to move cranes from one bridge to another, then I suggest that you instead use the Cranes object in the Extras library. This newer library is simpler, has a few more features, and is more robustly tested.
http://www.simio.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=2478

[kiminga]

Can the Cranes object in the Extras library be sub-classed in the same manner as the Bridge and Underhung cranes? I am running into issues with 3-crane deadlocks in the Cranes object which is why I was looking for something else which could be sub-classed and modified.

[dsturrock]

Can the Cranes object in the Extras library be sub-classed in the same manner as the Bridge and Underhung cranes? I am running into issues with 3-crane deadlocks in the Cranes object which is why I was looking for something else which could be sub-classed and modified.

Yes they can. But perhaps you won't need to -- the Cranes in the Extras library do a much better job avoiding deadlocks.

[kiminga]

The documentation for the crane library states that the cranes can have their traversal direction set to either left and right or forward and backward. I wish to use a combination of both in a single model but cannot seem to find the traversal direction. Can you assist?