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Help from the Experts

In this newsletter we're bringing you some tips from our Technical Support and Consulting Teams. They use SIMUL8 every day in a wide variety of industries, helping to improve processes in lots of different problem areas. They've also helped thousands of customers through our free support desk and one to one and group training courses across the globe to help our customers quickly get started with SIMUL8. They know every feature of the software and all the common mistakes people make when they're learning.

If you'd like to speak to our experts directly then please email support@SIMUL8.com. They are always happy to help.

Passive Routing

If you need to link two Work Centers directly (without a Storage Bin between them) remember to set either the routing out of the first Work Center, or the routing in of the second Work Center, to Passive. Without this the movement of work items between the processes may happen at the wrong time or the item may travel along the wrong route causing incorrect model results.

Set your Priority and Shelf Life Label Before Entering a Storage Bin

If you're using a prioritized queue or using a label for Shelf Life time, remember to set the labels before the item enters the Storage Bin. If you try to set the label using the on entry logic of the storage bin it's too late. Setting the label before the item reaches the storage bin allows SIMUL8 to calculate where to position the item when loading it into the bin and the required expiry time.

Minimum Wait Time Can be Slow

Depending on how your model is structured sometimes using Minimum Wait Time in a Storage Bin can make your simulation run slower. This is because SIMUL8 has to generate lots of additional events to keep checking whether any of the work items have reached their minimum wait time. As an alternative sometimes we use Shelf Life in a Storage Bin instead and use a Work Center with Expired Only Routing In. Also you can try using a Work Center with Replicate set to a large value (for reference maximum replicate value is 10000) and use the cycle time as the Minimum Wait Time. See our Speed Consideration Newsletter for more tips like this.

Navigate the Window Easily

If you just scroll the mouse wheel it will zoom your simulation in and out. If you hold down the ctrl key while you scroll the mouse wheel it will move the simulation window up and down. If you hold down the shift key while scrolling then it will move the simulation left and right. Lastly, just hold down the alt button to pan around the simulation window.

Execution Order On Reset

Before the Visual Logic Event On Reset is executed SIMUL8 runs its own reset logic such as resetting variables and scheduling the next runs arrivals etc. So if you've ever tried to make say Storage Bin Start Up Contents set from a spreadsheet but had to press reset twice for it to take effect. It's often better to do any actions (e.g. importing any data, setting distributions) when resetting the model in the Before Reset Visual Logic Event.

Self Documenting Visual Logic

There's lot of different advice out there about how best to document your code. At SIMUL8 we try to make our code document itself as much as possible. So we put prefixes on all the different types of variable to make them easily identifiable e.g. lbl_ = label, ss_ = spreadsheet etc. That way when you or others view your Visual Logic they don't have to search around to find out is being referenced they can tell from reading the variable name.

Set Travel Times to Zero

One of the common questions we get asked from customers is to explain why they can't account for every work item that has entered their simulation. More often that not it's because there's Travel Time on Routing Arrows. By default SIMUL8 adds Travel Time to every routing arrow between a Work Center and Storage Bin.This is because a lot of the time Work Centers are being used to represent physical steps in a process which it takes time to move between. Sometimes this means that when you pause your simulation some of the Work Items can't be seen directly in a simulation object because they are traveling from one to another. You can turn off travel times easily in Tools/ Preferences/ Distance. See our Knowledge Base article on Simulation Checklist for other things you should check when you start building any model.

Attach Spreadsheets to Work Items

A little known SIMUL8 feature is the ability to attach spreadsheets to a work item. This is perfect for reducing the number of labels you have to manage, or if your data is multi dimensional. Also consider give each Work Item a Unique ID that they carry in a label. You can then have one global spreadsheet that collects all the input or output information for a work item. The unique ID becomes the row number with the column being the equivalent of having hundreds of labels.

We hope you've found these tips useful. If you'd like to discuss your simulation or just get some general advice please contact us, we're here to help you succeed with simulation.