Search the Community

Hello, Currently I am modeling a simple logistics network, I used nodes to represent locations in the network. The transfer between the nodes is performed by vehicles. When entities enter a node, there are user defined processes in order to update Model Entity state variables. However, I get an error when the entity state variables are updated saying that there is a mismatch in the type; the expected type is still a transporter. I used a Drop-off step before the Assign step, but when the transporter rides more than one entity, this solution did not help. Do you have any suggestions how to solve this problem? When a transporter enters its destination node, doesn't it automatically drop-off all the entities that are riding with it? Thank you, Selin

Entity is an object definition and is a base object, i.e. one of the fundamental building blocks that other objects are built with. Its properties and states are defined as part of the Simio engine and are not under user control. Costs and Priority are examples of states that are defined on Entity. ModelEntity is an object definition derived from Entity. It contains all of the properties, states, and behaviors that an Entity has, plus more. For example a ModelEntity contains Picture and Animation states and the OnEnteredFreeSpace process that are not defined on Entity. DefaultEntity is not an object definition, but is rather an Instance of the ModelEntity object definition. So it has all the characteristics of a ModelEntity, but each instance can have its own property values. You can see in this screen shot (from ModelEntity > Definitions > States) that Priority is a state inherited from Entity, but Picture is a state defined on ModelEntity. You might search Help on Hierarchy for additional information.

Thank you Glenn! I'm a new simio user and I don't know exactly how to use the step process. Could you explain me how to implement steps 2-4 of your approach? Thanks! Breno

There are lots of videos now available on the Simio web pages: http://www.simio.com/resources/videos/index.htm http://www.simio.com/about-simio/learn-how-to-use-simio-simulation-software.html http://www.simio.com/academics/simio-academic-resources.htm http://www.youtube.com/user/SimioSimulation

I had a similiar problem with the transporter not listening what you tell it to do.... Solution... Delete the on visiting Node process and rewrite the logic....There are setNode,s statements in the Onvisitingnode process which overwrites the user assignments as the process is the first and last process which executes during run time as a transporter moves through a node....

The basic technique is that instead of including C and D in the sequence, you include a "choice" node where the decision is made which one(s) to go to and in what order. I have attached a draft SimBit submitted by a user that illustrates the technique.FlexibleProcessingSequence.zip

Time varying arrival rates are random. Excerpt from Simio Help: Rate Tables The Rate Tables panel in the Data window allows the user to model situations where an arrival/event rate varies discretely over time. The number of fixed rate periods and the length of each rate period can be specified in the Rate table. The rate pattern automatically repeats during the running of the simulation. A Rate table is used by the Source object / Timer element to generate entities / events with a time-varying rate. Internally, a non-stationary Exponential distribution is used to calculate the rates. The rate units for the Poisson arrival process is Arrivals per Hour, regardless of the time units specified for the intervals of the rate table. In order to use a Rate Table with the standard Source object, set the Arrival Mode property in the Source to 'Time Varying Arrival Rate' and then select the appropriate Rate Table for the Rate Table property. The Source also includes a Rate Scale Factor property that can be used to easily modify the values within the table by a given factor instead of changing the values separately. For example, to increase the Rate Table values by 50%, simply specify the Rate Scale Factor within the Source to '1.5'.

I want to publicly thank: James Doran, Mining Systems Modeler, Anglo American James has made tremendous contributions to this forum. His tagline reads: Resident Problem Synthesiser and he has done plenty of that... he has often been a pain in the, um, er, keyboard as he pushes and stretches Simio to do more things with it. Sometimes this means reporting bugs or asking difficult to answer questions . But more often he identifies opportunities to improve Simio and posts them to give us a permanent record as well as the opportunity to collect other user feedback. Along the way James has accumulated a great knowledgebase and he is always forthcoming to share that knowledge with others. He often steps in to answer problems posted by novices and experts alike and often contributes to interesting discussions. On behalf of Simio and our user form members - THANK YOU JAMES DORAN! You have made significant contributions to both the Simio forum and the Simio software. A small token of our appreciation is on its way to you.

Dave recommends going back to the source, which is definitely going to be the easier option. However, if you really want to get at the embedded models, open the Simio project file (my_awesome_model.spfx) like a zip using 7-zip or some other archive managing tool. In the Simio Project file, there is a "\Data\Geometry\" folder. You will find all of the custom (user added) symbols here. They are in S3D format. As I have never had to use these directly, I never felt a need to find what tool can open those. As for the Simio ones, they are all ssfx files (another format I haven't had to play with yet). They can be found in the Simio folder in your documents. Something like: "C:\Users\Public\Documents\Simio\Symbols"

Actually it was doing that at one point and then we fixed it. Seriously, that isn't a typical behavior of cranes sharing a runway, but I could see that some cranes might allow that. The point of this library is to provide cranes that work together as a system. But that might be an optional behavior that could be implemented in a future library or it could certainly be added as a specific user variation of the library. Or, depending on how interdependent they are, you might just model your system as multiple (sets of) cranes that just happen to operate in the same space.

I haven't done routing using tables, but I have definitely done server based decisions where each server had a row in the table. And things from server properties to parameters used within the server logic were also in the same row. The search step in conjunction with logic that tells you what the parent object you are in is.... works wonders. It is a staple form of modelling for me now. It is far easier to control parameter values from a table, than via the UI. As to the usage of the API... as you might guess... the API is not advanced enough to create or even edit models. All of the model development is done via the GUI, and a single experiment is created (with relevant properties to drive it), as experiments can't be created via the API either. The API is then solely invoked to change the parameters in the experiment, and run the experiment. The CSVs written out from the experiment are then sucked into the program, and processed and displayed in graphs or available to be spat out into pre-made excel sheets. This reduces the requirement of running a model from needing knowledge of excel + simio (quite a bit of knowledge is required here), to solely needing to run the one custom app and understanding what all the parameters you change do (API can't pull out definition descriptions). The custom app obviously uses the Simio API, but at no time requires the user to open the Simio GUI or touch the model directly. It won't mean much, but attached are a few screenshots of what kind of data we put in and get out using the custom tool. As you can see, you can add multiple scenarios in, and do the same kind of scenario comparison, and even look at what is happening Gannt chart wise.

The post you quoted was over 3 years old (now updated a bit) and lots of things have changed since then including we moved to a new (.com) web site, renamed the existing Enterprise edition to Team Edition, then a year later came out with a new product named Team Edition. Somewhere along the way we introduced a new product named Express Edition which, among other things, can serve as a full runtime that supports experimentation. Here is an excerpt from our current documentation: Description of Runtime Capability Runtime is the ability for people to execute a Simio model without investing in that design-time version of Simio. Simio imposes no limits to the number of models you can distribute or the number of people you distribute to. And you are free to distribute outside of your organization if you choose. There is no charge for any such distribution Two runtime modes are available: Interactive Runtime Uses Simio Evaluation Version which is available free to anyone and may be used without activation. It provides the ability to load a model, run it interactively to view the animation, and even change the model at will. Model changes cannot be saved nor is the capability provided to run experiments or execute custom user-written steps and elements. Only Simio Team Edition (or higher) is capable of creating models that will run in Interactive Runtime. Full Runtime Uses Simio Express Edition. In addition to the substantial modeling features built into Express, it provides the ability to load and run models, save model changes, run experiments, and execute custom user-written steps and elements. Design, Team, and Enterprise Editions can create models for use with Full Runtime.

Thanks for the reminder Steve. I sometimes forget the most basic things. I still don't understand why the file element is missing from the menu though. Perhaps because it is a user add-on, in which case we need a user add-on element for properties.

I am trying to model a server with several failures, where each failure may have a different explanation and thus, a different pattern. One obvious approach is subclassing a Server and defining additional elements, such as Failure, Timers, etc and modify the processes so that several failures can cause the downtime of the server. However, I do not feel very comfortable with the scalabitliy of this approach. I mean, if a server has three types of failures I will have to add two new Failure elements, 8 timers, 4 corresponding to each Failure and so on. If at some point in time I need to add an additional failure, I would need to do the adding all over again, an so on. I am considering two different approaches for this, but I do not know if these are feasible or if there is a far better approach. Approach 1. I would like to subclass the server and create a Repeat Group property so that the user, by means of adding rows, may characterize as many failures as desired. The thing is, is is possible to modify the processes so that they are general enough to reflect any number of failures (with their corresponding characterization)? Approach 2. I was thinking of creating a new object, let us call it objFailure, which contains definitions and processes to reproduce the behaviour of a failure type. The idea would be that this objFailure has a property which would contain the number of an element within the project, so that when objFailure fails, the corresponding object fails. This way, modelling a server with several types of failures woukd consist in creating that server and as many objFailure as required, which would cause the server to fail as they themselves fail. The issue with this approach is that it may not be that easy to represent interferences among failures. For example, if objFailure1 is a count based event failure and objFailure is a Processing Time based failure, when objFailure1 occurs, the server stops and the time during which is down should not be taken into account by objFailure2. This may very complex to program effectively and efficiently.

Just a word of warning using .simproj (or .xml) files with SVN: if there is a conflict you cannot use the merge capabilities of SVN because the Simio hash will no longer match. Simio will not open the "resolved" file. This limits the usefulness of version control particularly in an environment with multiple developers (or, in my case, an inexperienced SVN user ) Perhaps another reason to allow licensed users the ability to edit/load xml files? Thanks, Adam Yeah that is a good point. We were aware of it, and somewhat frustrated by it. What we were after though is a better way of illustrating the Simio models we make to non-simio users. Hopefully in the form of structural diagrams, or even at a very basic level,: videos, pictures, and flow charts. As there doesn't appear to be a good way of doing this, we are writing our own parsing app to do this.

Just a word of warning using .simproj (or .xml) files with SVN: if there is a conflict you cannot use the merge capabilities of SVN because the Simio hash will no longer match. Simio will not open the "resolved" file. This limits the usefulness of version control particularly in an environment with multiple developers (or, in my case, an inexperienced SVN user ) Perhaps another reason to allow licensed users the ability to edit/load xml files? Thanks, Adam

Jdoran, I have the same love-and-hate feeling towards Simio, I get a lot of user feeback from chinese community, some comments are really disappointing and let many people doubt simio’s capabilities. Many guys like you had quite bad experience starting using Simio, they don’t think Simio is so easy to grasp,not so intuitive and have many obstacles to solve the “unreasonable” demands, Lots of people tell me that tools like flexsim, automod, or even Plant Simulation rules( being the mostly used tool in china,especially academic worlds., that Simio is too crude.. But after two years of learning and modeling, I really begin to find the real value of a object-oriented process-driven tool like simio, it’s really efficient and the power is only limited to your imagination, But during modeling, I do bump into many unpleasant experiences like yours, ex.bugs, strange crash, slow opening and execution of large models. But thanks to god and thanks to SIMIO TEAMs, They input a lot of effort into customer feedback and I have confidence ,in a few years , I will proudly say, Simio RULES now  The good thing of being a reseller is that I can get a great deal of request and feedback for simio to grow..!

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.

Yes. Runtime is a capability for a model to be run by someone who does not have a Simio license. Let's review some version capability: -- Models created in Simio Design Edition can be run by anyone with a commercial license, but cannot be run by someone with a academic or evaluation software. -- Models created in Simio Team or Enterprise Edition can be run by anyone with a commercial license, but can also be run by someone with evaluation software. -- Evaluation software is similar to the commercial version except that it cannot save models and can only load models that are prepared using Enterprise Edition. And it cannot execute programmatic interfaces (an advanced feature). Evaluation software can be freely downloaded from the Simio.com web site. So if you use Simio Team or Enterprise Edition, you can distribute your models to anyone else and they can run the models using software that they can legally use for free. The runtime user can load your model, run it interactively to view the animation, and even change the model at will. But they cannot save any model changes. To do that requires a commercial version. You (the model builder) can further restrict what the runtime user can do, if you wish, by protecting parts of your original model. So if your desire is to distribute a model for experimentation in the interactive mode only, you can protect the model so they can only change only the properties that you expose. Simio imposes no limits to the number of models you can distribute or the number of people you distribute to. And you are free to distribute outside of your organization if you choose. And there is no charge for any such distribution.

Thanks for visiting our Simio User's Forum. This forum has been created to: 1) Share information about Simio, 2) Provide a way for users to communicate with each other and with us, and 3) Provide a mechanism for us to to hear your ideas so we can make the best product possible. Guests If you are Guest (visiting without having registered), you are welcome to browse all our public forums, but we request that you first join our Simio Insiders group before you view the private areas or can post on any areas. Simio Insiders I encourage you to become more involved as a Simio Insider. Insiders will have full access to browse and post in an extended set of forums available just for you. You will find more information on this in Why Become a Simio Insider. There is one more category of membership that is a little harder to achieve. Simio Team Members (employees) are identified as such when we post so you know that we are providing the straight scoop. (This is not to imply by any means that we are always right ) Finally, if you have any other questions about how the forum works, I encourage you to consult the "FAQ" item from the main Forums menu (top center). Again, welcome to the forum. I am always anxious to hear your feedback (positive or negative) and any ideas on how we can improve this forum or our products. Email me anytime using dsturrock at simio.com

Did you ever wish you had been involved when a product was being designed? Have you ever said the words "If only they had asked me..."? This is your chance. Simio is a different kind of company in many ways. 1) One is that we welcome your ideas. And not just ideas concerning something we are about to ship, but ideas for new features, opinions on our early designs and concepts, and opinions on the ideas of others. This forum is one of the ways we hope to encourage your involvement. 2) A second way we are different is that we are agile. In short that means that every idea will get logged and prioritized. The highest priority ideas may be seen in new software in as little as a month. In my mind the most important reason to join is the opportunity to help change the simulation industry. Yes, that's "big talk", but WE ARE ALREADY DOING IT! The whole industry is advancing while trying to keep up with our frequent innovations. We have a lot of ideas in the pipeline, but we are missing yours... please join and help design the next generation of simulation products. But if you are looking for more reasons to join and participate, how about: - Access to early designs and concepts - Access to pre-release product downloads - Networking with the Simio user community (share your problems and help others solve theirs) - An opportunity to help set development priorities - Access to exclusive content - Access to Simio team members - Our sincere gratitude. If this sounds interesting, please join now. Read the topic How to Become a Simio Insider to find out how.