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As you have discovered (and I discussed in my post above), running an experiment puts Simio in its fastest run mode possible. And in this mode it will automatically distribute the replications and scenarios across all of your processors/cores. This alone can provide dramatic speedups. If you have Team Edition, you can actually extend that to use spare processing power in your work group. So if you have 4 quad-processor machines available on your local network, you can run up to 16 simultaneous replications or scenarios. In terms of modeling, the most dramatic improvement you could make is to build your model at a lower level. The model you described is simple to model entirely in a single process with steps: (begin) - Seize - Delay - Release - Tally - (end) with the process triggered by a Timer element and using TallyStatistics elements for any token-related statistics like Time In System. You would not even need to create any entities, it could all be done using tokens which are smaller and faster. The process approach should be many times faster.

If you have a model that will generate results, you can certainly just put it up there and have various people work on it. However, you would need some sort of exclusive lock mechanism, like an email telling the rest of the group that you are currently working on the model - because we do not provide merge capability between model revisions. I'm not sure if Sharepoint has this sort of notification system though. If you want to collaborate on a library of objects, then I would recommend some source control system (like svn). If you decide to use source control, I would suggest saving in the .simproj format, since this will give you the raw xml file and the data files which make it deasy to revision and see changes made in source control. Thanks

Hi, I have made an example model illustrating how to do what you are asking. In the attached model, I have 1 entity that requires a 40 hour delay & a Secondary resource for processing. I have a Day Shift worker and a Night Shift worker, each work 12 hour shifts, and the Entity seizes whichever is availabe from a list upon entering the Server. By default, if a secondary resource is seized, the worker will attempt to finish the current job before going off-shift. This is nice if there is something like 15 or 20 minutes left on a job, but not ideal if there is 28 hours left... What I did was created a process that gets Triggered by the Workers' OffShift Add-On process that Interrupts Processing > Releases the Worker > and Transfers the Entity back into the Server Object - which will then start the whole processing process all over again and seize whatever worker is available. Note that in the Interrupt Step, I set the Interupted Process Action to Resume Delay, and the Save Remaining Process Time property to Record ths remaining processing time to the ModelEntity.ProcessTime State (which is initially assigned to 40 in the Source and then gets updated upon every interrupt) For more examples of Interrupting processes see the SimBits: InterruptibleOperator, InterruptingAcrossMultipleServers, & InterruptingServerWithMultipleCapacity Thanks InterruptingProcessingToSwitchWorkers.spfx

Today I had to do a quick and dirty model in Arena. I just thought I would take this opportunity to do a quick post on my findings. By no means is this a comprehensive analysis of the two tools, but I just felt like sharing my opinion of the two. Being the predecessor to Simio, it is natural to compare the two tools, and even after using Arena for the short amount of time I did... the differences were astounding. I will admit that Simio was my first immersion into the world of using corporate modelling tools. It was a tough journey to get to the stage where I felt comfortable using Simio, but looking back... I wonder how I got by using the archaic tools I did. The learning curve to Simio was extremely steep (in my humble opinion that is), and I still don't believe I am anywhere near utilizing 100% of Simio's capabilities. That being said... Simio is a relatively new tool and is still under active development. After launching Arena for the first time, the first thing that struck me was how bland/simple it was. Putting that to one side, I was impressed with how intuitive it was to use. This may be a side effect of using Simio, but barring my inability to find the Connect button for linking the objects together, I simply dragged objects into the process view and linked them up. The objects all had names that made sense (workstation... server... what were you guys thinking? >_>), and ignoring the fact that most of the symbols looked like they were drawn by pre-schoolers... the process of getting a simple model running was child's play. Within 5minutes I had my first working model. (I can tell you that it took a lot longer than that for my first Simio experience) One of the features I would love to see the most in Simio... AVI export. It was right there, and it was easy. Come on Simio! After placing multiples of an object, there was a table at the bottom of the screen with every other object of the same type, allowing you to quickly locate and edit properties of said objects... Simio... adding something like this would immeasurably improve productivity (mine atleast) and increase my levels of sanity after working with large models. Another point to note was that Arena felt very responsive, and while this normally would not be an achievement for a piece of software... Arena did not crash or give cryptic errors. (Simio crashed multiple times during my first 30minute experience with it... and I didn't even know how to do anything more advanced with it at that stage). The last point to make in this section of the post, is how human readable the reports were. My eyes were not assaulted with a million numbers. You could argue this is a bad thing or a good thing, but at the end of the day, some of these reports matched what I typically look for in Simio, and have to waste time trying to get. They were also laid out clearly and concisely. I am sure Arena has a fairly similar learning curve to Simio once you get to the more advanced stuff, but I have got to say that Arena definitly has the edge of many years of polish and tweaking. I am not here though to plug Arena. Let's get to the meat of this post now. The things I saw in my short time using Arena in comparison to Simio, that Simio did better. Even though I feel Simio has a lot more work to do on getting their product to the kind of a level Arena sits at (polish and usability) in terms of: aesthetics, power, time-savings (gained from re-usability of objects in Simio, instead of hard coded processes in Arena), feature base, and on-going development... Simio wins hands down. The benefits of object based models in comparison to process based models are imeasureable, and while some of the more basic features you would expect (or take for granted) in a modelling tool are lacking or missing in Simio, a lot of thought and has gone into the development of this tool. You can really see how Simio is the next generation of tool. I guess the point I am really trying to convey is, Simio rocks. It may be buggy as hell, it may not have every bell and whistle to satisfy my unreasonable demands, and it may not be as smooth or intuitive as Arena, but it is actively developed and a lot of love and care went into its development. I dare say that given time and a bigger/more active community, Simio will truly come into its own. The Arena community may be larger, but it does not appear as if Arena itself is evolving to meet the ever changing demands of the market. I guess it won't be long until the remaining Arena modellers move on and embrace newer technologies like Simio. Sorry for the long post. TLDR: Keep up the good work guys!

In the current version of Simio, there is no fixed relationship between simulated time and real time. The model will run as fast as possible given the contraints of the number of simulation events and related "work" being done. The two other things that most dramatically impact simulation speed are Trace (when trace is on it excuted slower) and Animation (3D animation with a low speed factor runs slower). We have plans to provide an Emulation product for use in training and testing. Before that product is created, we will add the capability for Simio to run in real time or any multiple of real time. Speed Factor can be used to speed or slow the animation. Its main purpose is to improve the quality of an animation by decreasing the factor. This also has the side effect of slowing the animation so you can see certain events more clearly. Conversely, if you increase the speed factor, the animation will run faster, but in doing so, certain events (like movement on a path) might become jumpy or too fast to observe. Fast-Forward can be used to temporarily disable animation to allow the model to execute much fsater. Running an Experiment provides the fastest execution possible. Not only is animation and user interaction turned off, but it will also take full advantage of all processors on a multiprocessor machine, often running 2-4 times faster.

You have joined an exclusive group. You have earned access to the inner workings of a great product. We are all very excited about our endeavor. It is way more than just a job... all of us on the team know that this is a special opportunity to change the simulation industry. And we are anxious to have you participate with us. As I mentioned in another post, Simio is a different type of company. One of those differences is that we recognize the significant value that YOU can offer. More than that, we are willing to "bare our sole" to you in an unprecedented way so that you have enough information to work with us. We know there is risk in this, but feel it is worthwhile so that we can produce truly stellar results. We know that your time is very valuable and we appreciate any time that you can spend to help. I would suggest that you start with the topics which are of greatest interest or those where you have the greatest expertise. We are interested in general feedback, novel ideas, mundane ideas (that we might otherwise overlook), feature requests, implementation suggestions... in short anything you offer, we want. If you think we need a new category or are otherwise missing some opportunity, please let me know. For most things I might suggest considering at least these four aspects: • What are the basic requirements (you would not use a product that did not have this)? • What would the ideal product look like? • Importance/urgency of the base feature and of any extended features. • How well the present proposal (if any) meets the needs Please remember that everything you read in here (whether posted by the Simio team or others) is protected by the Confidentiality Agreement. Please help us keep our evolving features confidential until they get to market. If our collective "novel ideas" trickle out into competitive products, it will weaken our ability to bring you the best possible product. Thanks again for your participation. Together we are defining a new state-of-the-art in simulation.

A common way to create object definitions in Simio is by combining other objects, for example combining machines and a robot to define a work cell object. This type of object is called a composed object because we create this object by combining two or more component objects. This object building approach is fully hierarchical, i.e. a composed object can be used as a component object in building higher level objects. A second, more basic method for creating objects in Simio is by defining the logical processes that alter their state in response to events. For example, a machine object might be built by defining the processes that alter the machine state as events occur such as part arrival, tool breakdown, etc. This type of modeling is similar to the process modeling done in traditional modeling systems in use today such as Arena or GPSS. An object that is defined by describing its native processes is called a base object. A base object can in turn be used as a component object for building higher level objects. The final method for building objects in Simio is based on the concept of inheritance. In this case we create an object from an existing object by overriding (i.e. replacing) one or more processes within the object, or adding additional processes to extend its behavior. In other words we start with an object that is almost what we want, and then we modify and extend it as necessary to make it serve our own purpose. For example we might build a specialized drill object from a generalized machine object by adding additional processes to handle the failure and replacement of the drill bit. An object that is built in this way is referred to as a derived object because it is sub-classed from an existing object. Regardless which method is used to create an object, once created it is used in exactly the same way. An object can be instantiated any number of times into a model. You simply select the object of interest and place it (instantiate it) into your model.