Swimlanes
Swimlanes are common in process mapping.
Swimlanes are shown as horizontal or vertical bands on the simulation window. Horizontal swimlanes are called Departments and can be used to represent how often work needs to move between different Departments while following a process. Vertical swimlanes are called Phases.
In the example below there are 5 Departments and 4 Phases.
Creating Swimlanes
On the Build tab, click Swimlanes > New. From this dialog you can create a new swimlane and define its name, type and set its colour scheme. The name cannot be the same as any other swimlane or object in your simulation. You can also access the Group properties for this swimlane – see Swimlanes and Groups below.
If you drop a BPMN object onscreen outside an existing swimlane, Simul8 automatically creates swimlanes for you.
Editing Swimlanes
Going to the Build tab and clicking Swimlanes > List will open a list of swimlanes currently in the simulation. You can see at a glance the names, types and status of the swimlanes. Single-clicking on any of the swimlanes will highlight the objects within it. Click properties (or double-click on the swimlane) to open that swimlane’s properties.
This dialog also contains options to create a new swimlane, show/hide all swimlanes and apply styling options to all swimlanes. You can also access the Style All menu directly from the Swimlanes button on the ribbon.
To change the height or width of your swimlane hover the mouse over the border line in the swimlane, the cursor will change, grab the line and move it to resize the swimlane. By default, object positions will remain static if you resize a swimlane. This means moving the lanes may change which swimlane they are positioned in. If you want the objects to reposition to ensure they remain in their original swimlanes, go to the Swimlanes > List and check the option ‘Reposition objects on resize’.
Swimlanes and Groups
Placing an object into a swimlane automatically places it in a Group with all the other objects in that swimlane. An object can be in multiple swimlane simultaneously, e.g. in Department 3 and Phase 6. Dragging an object to a different swimlane or moving the lane around objects will automatically update the Group(s) the object belongs to.
Access a Group’s properties through the swimlane’s properties dialog or through the Group button on the Build tab. The group properties dialog provides a list of all objects within the Group. You can also control settings such as limiting the number of work items that can be in a Group at any one time and set efficiency settings for the Group. Read more about Groups in the helpfile linked below.