SIMUL8 R10 - What Was New

SIMUL8 Release 10 had some major new developments, including an Grafx importer, multi object changer and track changes. We are currently on SIMUL8 2008, check out the SIMUL8 2008 Feature Tour.

Click on the links below for details on all the features added in SIMUL8 R10. Features with beside them are only available with SIMUL8 Professional:

SIMUL8 Viewer

Now you can distribute your simulations to colleagues who don't own SIMUL8. SIMUL8 Viewer will let them view and run your simulations. If you've build in custom dialogs or spreadsheets that contain data to be changed they'll also be able to edit your simulation!

SIMUL8 Viewer is only available with SIMUL8 Professional. You are licensed to distribute it to as many people as you like.

More Information

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Track Changes

This is one of the most significant features to be developed for SIMUL8 in recent years. SIMUL8 can now look at 2 simulations and highlight the differences between both. This allows multiple people to work on the same simulation potentially saving weeks of work.

Track Changes is only available with SIMUL8 Professional.

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Multi Object Changer

This fantastic new feature will save you hours when building your simulation. You can now select multiple objects of the same type and change parameters to the same value in each.

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iGrafx Importer

Import your flowcharts directly from iGrafx as a process or activity steps.

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Reset Clock Display After Warm Up

Warm up time now has the option to NOT include this in clock display (i.e. clock resets to start of week at end of warm up time)

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Added clock Format "Percentage"

Instead of seeing the current simulation time you can now choose to see what percentage of your run has been completed.

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Precise Clock Control

Get your simulation to exactly the point you want with the new precise clock controls. You can step forward to an exact time or even run the simulation backwards! This is invaluable when you're debugging your simulation.

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Interruptible Resources

Resources at a work center with low priority work can now be interrupted by higher priority work from anywhere in the simulation. The work item the resource is currently working on is suspended until the resource is free to return from the higher priority work center.

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Combined Priorities

Describe the priority of a work center as a combination of a fixed value and the current work items label value. This is really useful in simulations where the priority of different resources is different for each work center.

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Auto adjust replicate levels

You no longer have to adjust the replicate level of work centers using resources to the highest number of resources available as SIMUL8 will now do this for you.

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Travel Time Matrix

Travel Times of Resources can now be displayed and edited in a more convenient matrix format. The matrix can also be copied to or pasted in from other external packages.

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Auto Update Travel Times

Whenever you move work centers that resources travel between you can now have SIMUL8 automatically update the resource travel time.

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You can now see the resource utilization results split into working and traveling time. SIMUL8 also now reports the minimum, average and maximum numbers of resources used.

As with all other results these new results can be added to the results summary and accessed from Visual Logic.

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Resource Route Arrows

The travel paths of resources can now be displayed by routing arrows. Left clicking on these arrows also give direct access to the travel times of the resource.

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Pooled Resource Priority Rule

An additional priority rule has been added to Pooled Resources. You can now select to use the Pool Member which hasn't been used for the longest.

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Swimlane Results Collection / Actual vs. Elapsed Time

This feature reports the average, minimum and maximum for both working time and waiting time for work items across the entire simulation and optionally across each Group, or swimlane, of simulation objects.

The report is also broken down by "Work Type". Work Type is the general label in SIMUL8 used to distinguish between different types of work. Create a label called "Work Type" and set it to values to have the report add an extra row for each value of Work Type.

Full Size Image

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Gantt Charts

Formerly available with the SIMUL8 TimeView Plugin this excellent feature is now available as part of SIMUL8 Standard.

Gantt Charts provide a understanding of the interaction between different parts of your simulation. It provides an attention grabbing view across the whole of your simulation run that allows you to examine when what has happened. You can zoom in on short time periods and select a subset of the simulation objects to view.

Gantt Charts show you a time based view of what was happening to, for example, resources when a queue of your customers was forming, or what breakdowns had a critical impact on parts delivery, or what work centers were blocked during different shifts, or what resources are OK on average but causing stock outs during critical peak times.

 

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Profit and Loss Account

Formerly available with the SIMUL8 Profit Plugin this excellent feature is now available as part of SIMUL8 Standard.

SIMUL8 can display an interactive Profit and Loss statement for each simulation and has options to set overhead cost and external revenues etc. that are needed to calculate the bottom line profit.

The interactive statement lets you "drill down" to discover the source of costs or revenue. And any elements of the statement can be added to the main Results Summary. This means the financial implications of a changed simulation are directly displayed along with any non financial performance measures you need for decision making.

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Sigma Score

A Sigma Score for your process can now be calculated for you by SIMUL8 and displayed on your results summary.

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Other Enhancements to Results

- Ignore the initial content of storage bins more
- Resource utilization results split into working and traveling time more
- Minimum, average and maximum numbers of resources used more
- "Remove all results from summary" button to Results / All dialog

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New Animated Queue Displays

Block
Each work item is represented by one block.

Graphic Tank
Similar to the Tank Display option Graphic Tank shows an icon that fills as the storage bin fills but is more graphical.

Graph
Display the contents of a queue as a graph.

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Results Preferences

The initial content of storage bins can now be omitted from results.

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XP Theme Support

SIMUL8's interface has been enhanced to support XP themes. It's a major step forward in the Professional look of SIMUL8.

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Hide Routing In Arrows

As well as being able to hide the arrows routing out of an object you can now hide the arrows routing into an object. This is great for tidying up your simulation.

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Copy and Paste Colors

In Release 9 we provided the capability to draw with the full range of 24 million colors, but using them was a little difficult. You can now copy and paste colors between objects.

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Improved Image Editor

You can now copy and paste to and from the clipboard from inside the image editor. This makes it much faster to update images. A dropper tool has also been added so that you can copy the color from one image to another.

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Arrows on Objects Invisible

No longer do you have to have all arrows from an object on or off, you can now individually select the arrows you wish to hide.

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Work Items Centered on Conveyor

The width of a conveyor can now be adjusted freely as work items are automatically centered on the conveyor belt.

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Other Enhancements to Visual Features

- Zoom display driver rebuilt

- Clock algorithm changed for much better smoothness of graphics

- Save views of your simulation for easy navigation of large simulations >>more>>

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New Visual Logic Commands

New commands to:

- Get current Simulation Speed
- Suspend/Restart Work on Resource Change
- Set Conveyor Accumulating property
- Added VL "Get Links"
- Add/Remove Members from a Resource Pool
- Change timings for members of a pool
- Set Resource Requirement Type

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Copy and Paste Multiple Lines

The Visual Logic Editor can now copy and paste multiple lines at same indent level (CTRL-click)

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Object Speed Lists

The Speed List make it quicker to search for an object. Normally you would write Objvar+n. If you have a lot of objects this can get slow because SIMUL8 has to search through the whole of the file looking for the names of the objects as a string of text and then stopping when it has found it.

The Speed List creates a special table that avoids the need to search through the whole of SIMUL8 and instead links the object name to the object directly. You can place the object name into a table as text and SIMUL8 then links the name to the object without having to search through the file.

* This feature is available in SIMUL8 Professional Only

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Trace Work Item

This great new feature is similar to the 'stop and debug at line'. It lets you trace your work item as it passes through a section of visual logic code. So each time your work item causes some visual logic to run the model stops and lets you step through the code line by line.

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Memos on Variables

Memos can now be added to information store variables. This is really useful for documenting your simulation, especially if you are going to have to return to it at a later date or if you have to pass the simulation on to someone else.

You can also now view all your memos at the same time >>more>>

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Other Enhancements to Visual Logic

- Formula editor can be resized

- Info store mouse hover shows values of Object Variables too now

- Newly created Visual Logic in predefined sections, such as Time Check , now has comments automatically created to explain exactly how the section should be used.

- Visual Logic Editor stays in the same position each time its opened

- Components can now use SIMUL8 Standard Data items e.g. Simulation Time, in Visual Logic calculations

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View all memos

All the memos in your simulation can now be exported to a text file. This can be really good to pass on a documentation for your simulation, especially when passing your simulation to people not familiar with SIMUL8.

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Saved Views

Views of your simulation can now be saved to help you easily move your way around large simulations. This is also a fantastic feature for doing presentations with SIMUL8.

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Route Arrows Properties on Right Click

Right click on any routing arrows to get at its travel time properties.

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Other Enhancements to Building Productivity

• Click right on the Variables list in the information store to set the Main Data Sheet (also CTRL click XL button)
• 'Build Tools 2' now always stays closed until reopened
• On any Contents dialog on the "other"panel double click on the object names to inspect the object
• You can now hold down CONTROL when creating components to ignore the "remove component layer" check box
• Undo holds onto arrow clicks

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Interruptible work centers

Work centers have been enhanced so that when they are set to Interruptible they can now now be "replicated" and can now re-use resources currently held at the work center.

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Routing In/Out Circle

As you browse through the list of objects routing in or out from a work center the object is now highlighted on the main screen.

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Collect Route and Labels

In previous versions when you used the Collect Rule with Assemble if the work items had different values for the same label SIMUL8 would automatically select the highest value. Now you can now tell SIMUL8 which work item provides the label values by specifying the route it came from.

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Pick and Place on Conveyors

Formerly available with the SIMUL8 Transport Plugin this excellent feature is now available as part of SIMUL8 Standard.

The Conveyor Pick Up and Drop details allow you to specify the location of the Work Center relative to the Conveyor.

If it is used in a Work Center that feeds onto a Conveyor the items will be placed part way along the conveyor - 2 meters from the end so the items will travel only 2 meters.

If the dialog is used in a Work Center that pulls from a conveyor then it will pull items from the conveyor as they travel along the conveyor and reach a point 2 meters from the end. The Work Center will pull items off the conveyor before they reach the end.

The area of the Conveyor that can be accessed by lineside Work Centers is controlled by the Conveyor Properties dialog, Pick Area option. If a work item is within 1 meter of the position of the work center then it can be pulled from the conveyor by the work center.

Support for SolutionXML longer than 64k

In R7 we introduced XML file format, V9 made it possible to add data to XML using the Microsoft standard "SolutionXML" tag. Now you can add huge quantities of data in this way because each and every SolutionXML tag can be as long as you like - so entire custom databases of your own can be contained within the SIMUL8 XML files if required.

Please contact our support team for more detailed information on this feature.

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SIMUL8 Mode added to COM

SIMUL8's ActiveX/COM can now reveal to your calling code the state of the SIMUL8 system - this means you can respond differently to events in these different states. For example, you might want to respond differently to a request for data if SIMUL8 is running rather than just waiting for user input.

Please contact our support team for more detailed information on this feature.

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Multiple Processors

If more than one copy of SIMUL8 is installed on different PCs on the same network they can be linked so that each PC with SIMUL8 can be used to run the same simulation. So for example you could run trials with millions of runs in a fraction of the time. This feature can also be used to speed up optimization with SIMUL8 for OptQuest.

Please contact our support team for more detailed information on this feature.

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