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Simio LLC is a private company headquartered just outside Pittsburgh Pennsylvania dedicated to delivering leading edge solutions for the design, analysis, and scheduling of complex systems. Our company mission is to lead the industry with a truly innovative family of simulation-based design and scheduling products to improve the productivity of our customers. Simio was founded by a highly experienced team. C. Dennis Pegden, Ph.D., Founder and CEO of Simio LLC, has over 30 years of experience in simulation and scheduling and has been widely recognized as an industry leader. He led in the development of SLAM (marketed by Pritsker and Associates) and then founded Systems Modeling Corporation, now part of Rockwell Automation. Dr. Pegden led the creation of the market-leading simulation products SIMAN® and Arena®, as well as the finite capacity scheduling product Tempo (later renamed RS Scheduler). Many of the same team members who brought you Arena and a long line of industry breakthroughs have now focused their efforts on creating the next generation of simulation tools. This very talented team is bringing to bear an additional 125+ years of combined simulation experience to provide you with the best possible suite of simulation and scheduling tools. Simio has an experienced management team to provide leadership in the day-to-day management of the company. Simio also has an Advisory Board of experienced executives to provide strategic input to long term planning. Simio also has a worldwide network of over 25 very experienced partner companies who supply local sales, training, technical support, and consulting services.

Tried free eval version of Csim20, the included console M/M/1 demo. CPU-time reported is 2.5 secs (same computer) for 1M jobs. A bit faster than the Javasim. Csim obviously does book-keeping of all arrival/departure times to show queueing averages, but this can be turned off, which is what I now want to do in SIMIO. Turn on statistics only for specified objects.

You can explore the contents of the Simio Standard Library by subclassing any object. You can do that by clicking on MySimioProject in the navigation window or by right clicking on any library object and selecting Subclass. The file itself is StandardLibrary.spfx and can be found in the MyDocuments\SimioModels folder. You should not change this file as it is automatically (re)generated any time its contents do not match what is expected.

Thanks for the suggestion. It now takes 30 seconds runtime for 1 million ... tokens, I guess that would be. First time I try this low-level approach. I followed your instructions (begin-seize-delay-release-tally). Read the Reference PDF as well. Added a Resource1 though (so there was something to seize?). Can see utilization of Resource1 (seems correct at .8321), but no queueing stats and cannot find any results from that Tally Statistics. Will continue to try. Still, I find it slow. I have a Javasimulation of an M/M/1 that takes only 4 seconds to run 1 million customers (=tokens/entities in Simio). Each customer has to be generated, wait for a resource (seize), delay, release it and ends up in a sink (that tallies). Same computer. The javasim has none of the GUI that Simio has, but then, there's no GUI processing overhead in FastForward/experiment mode. And, the Javasim reports queue and worker statistics (mean, variance). Perhaps Simio is collecting excessive statistics (if so, can it be turned off)? Or is it that I made a mistake by adding a Resource1 (to be seized)?

I see that the EXPERIMENT MODE is 2-4 times faster. I try this (one replication) and it runs slightly faster (109 runtime seconds compared to 115). One CPU ran at 90 %, the other at 10 %. I try to run two replications, now both CPUs run at 100 %. Runtimes are 121 and 124 seconds (wall clock time is about 125 seconds). So, I can see that experiment mode on my dual core CPU halves my waiting time when running experiments. But, each individual simulation is still 110-115 seconds runtime on a dual core CPU that is about 50 % utilized. I assume there is no way to speed up Simio further than this.

Update: As of Sprint 65, the software now contains DateTime functions that return a number representing a minute, hour, day, month or year based on a datetime input (such as TimeNow). There are also additional functions that convert a datetime to/from a string and those that let you determine which day of the week, month or year corresponds to a given datetime. See Help for more information on these new functions. Examples of these functions are: DateTime.Month(datetime) - which will return the month component, expressed as an integer between 1 and 12, for the specified datetime value (if you want the month of the current simulation time, put TimeNow in the parenthesis). DateTime.DaysInMonth(month, year) - which will return the number of days in the specified month and year. Specify the month as a number ranging from 1 to 12 and the year as a number ranging from 1 to 9999. DateTime.ToString(datetime) - which will return a formatted datetime string for the specified numeric datetime value. For example, 02/08/2012 00:00:21.

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!

Hi, In order to extract date time infortmation from TimeNow, I combine the use of the FromDateTime and Substring functions. For example: To get the date in a MM/DD/YY format, I use : String.Substring(String.FromDateTime( TimeNow ),1, To get tim information in HH:MM:SS, I use : String.Substring(String.FromDateTime( TimeNow ),12, Happy Modeling,

Another way to be on the "early notice" list is to subscribe to forums. If you click on any forum, in the upper right there is a "Subscribe Forum" button. This will cause you to be notified each time there is new activity. You might want to do this for every forum of interest, and particularly for the SI Downloads forum where new sprints are often posted before being made available to the general public.

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.

We are now sponsoring a blog to help each other become more successful in our simulation projects. We will be sharing information and initiating discussions that will prove interesting and helpful to both experienced and novice simulationists. If you are not experienced at "blogging" let me assure you that it is pretty easy to participate. 1) You can just check http://www.simio.com/blog from time to time and see what's new. 2) If you don't want to miss any content, you can sign up for the RSS feed. This will result in an email automatically sent to you with each new post (approximately weekly). To sign up, look for the RSS link at the very bottom of the blog pages or in your toolbar. Or simply go now to http://www.simio.com/blog/feed. 3) For the most enriching experience, participate! Look at the end of each posting for a link to enter your comments. Or if you want to suggest topics or even post your own topic, contact me - I'd love to have your participation. This blog is not about Simio or any particular product, nor is it intended to be in any way commercial or sales-oriented. Success in Simulation is available to all simulationists, as well as anyone who wants to become a simulationist or who just wants to learn more about simulation. While we expect to focus mainly on discrete event simulation, articles on the related fields of agent-based modeling, system dynamics, and emulation will also be included. The articles will be intentionally be kept short for a quick read, and will be written in an informal style for easy reading. I encourage you to subscribe to the RSS feed so that you will automatically receive new articles as soon as they are posted.

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.