Simio Awards $79,200 Grant to Oklahoma State University

Sewickley, Pa. – Simio, a developer of 3D object-oriented simulation software, has awarded a $79,200 grant to the Spears School of Business at Oklahoma State University. The Spears School of Business actively incorporates technology into its curriculum and seeks input from leaders in business and government to help create industry-driven degrees. The grant comes in the form of 40 copies of Simio Academic Edition for installation on school computers.

Oklahoma State University (OSU) is now one of over a 190 universities worldwide to join Simio’s academic program, which offers Simio’s 3D modeling software to schools at no charge. Simio Academic Edition is fully capable software with no model size limits and includes discrete and continuous modeling, object library development, and 3D animation.

“The faculty at Oklahoma State University is committed to providing the best environment for their students to learn simulation,” said Dr. Dennis Pegden, Founder and CEO of Simio. “We are honored to provide them with the best software available to teach their students."

Dursun Delen, associate professor of management science and information systems, applied for the grant as a means to support teaching and research in discrete-event simulation.

To illustrate the software’s capabilities, Delen compared Simio’s software to the computer-aided design technology used in drafting technical and engineering drawings. He said CAD drawings encompass a product or building, where as this software deals with systems composed of many products, people, layouts, rules and regulations. Delen explained a complete airport can be simulated in this software to identify which gates are being overutilized and what kind of planning can be put in place to decrease the number of minutes in flight delays because of that overutilization.

“You’re doing all of that [analysis] in a computer environment without disrupting any of the real work,” Delen explained. “And then, once you optimize it, you can apply that solution directly to the actual system – actual airport – and expect the same or very similar results to occur. It’s a huge tool to optimize very complex, stochastic systems of the real world.”

Delen said this relatively new software, which he likened to modern video games, will be a great tool for OSU’s faculty, research ward and students.

“This software appears to be superior to any general-purpose simulation software I have seen so far,” Delen said.

Simio Academic Edition will be available at both OSU’s Tulsa and Stillwater sites. In addition to being installed in graduate-level research labs, undergraduate students will have access to the software in several open-access computer labs.

While faculty and graduate students already have begun utilizing the software, Delen said it should be available to all other students in the upcoming months. Students at the school will be able to model systems using intelligent objects and the software’s direct connection to Google’s 3D Warehouse – two features unique to Simio.

The intelligent objects are built by modelers and then may be reused in multiple modeling projects. These objects can be stored in libraries and easily shared. Simio’s connection to Google’s 3D Warehouse gives access to a free online library of thousands of graphic objects – providing students with the ability to solve real-world problems in visually-rich environments.