jrobinson

Hi Gocken, Sorry for delayed reply. This is very interesting! I have been wondering how a search might work. Thank you so much for kindly taking the time to follow up with this answer. It is very helpful! I am particularly interested in the ability to search the entire population. Thank You! Beat Regards, Jim

Hi Gocken, Thank you for your kind and quick response! I really like this use of a button! Unfortunately, I was not clear enough. As entities move through the system they carry quite a lot of state information. Our desire is at end or replication or an arbitrary time like a button click which a neat idea, to take an inventory of all the entities AND their states. This would mean capturing all the entities in each processing queue and through a write step. writing them out, either to an output table or a CSV. This operation is a bit complex. It does not seem one can search a processing queue to sequentially write out its members properties. I believe it is possible to maintain the residence of servers by maintaining that in a special output table which is tedious to maintain and set up. I greatly appreciate your response! Best Regards, Jim

Hi All, In examining a medical system, we have a requirement to log snapshots of the patient details being processed at specific points in time during experiment replications. For each server, we would like to know the state values for entities currently in processing in each functional area ( a mix of servers and storage queues). I suppose I am looking for an "Easy Button" which would quickly capture a Work In Process snapshot of the system. Are there any thoughts on accomplishing something like this? Any kind comments would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Jim

Dave, Thanks very much for your kind reply! I will take a look. Our intent is to do the "right" thing experimentally and initialize a bunch of task time states up front into the entities. This will mean carrying all those state values along through the processing. Since the number of entities is not particularly large at any one time I assume Simio will handle it. Best Regards, Jim

Hi, We have a model where we have multiple entity states. This creates interface challenges in defining and populating these states or changing many of them at a time. My question is, can the UI be bypassed in some way using some kind of batch operations? For example suppose I want to assign 150 entity states using string construction and naming conventions easily set up in a spreadsheet. Is there a way to define all those states and import them from a file rather than hand editing each one in the Definitions UI? Another example is I want to set large numbers of these states at appropriate points in processing. Is there any way to do so by just importing name value pairs from a file rather than hand editing each one and copy pasting from a spreadsheet built up accordingly. Thanks Very Much, Jim

Well, I seem to have made some progress. I realized I was trying to sort the contents of the station incorrectly. When I started using the "Contents Ranking Rule" the entities in the storage queue lined up correctly. I then found that I could assign a string Element Reference Element state variable "ElRef" to TestStation.Contents.ItemAtIndex(CycleCounter ) where TestStation is the name of my station with a storage queue. This returns a reference to the entity at wherever the cycle counter is at for example, it might find "entity.27" for the current reference. This is where I get a bit confused. I was able to then search the storage queue for TestStation.Contents.ItemAtIndex( CycleCounter)==ElRef. This is the only way I could figure out how to access the existing state values of the entity with reference "entity.27" or whatever as it would be guaranteed to exit the found branch. From that point I believe I can test the states of the found entity to see if it is a good fit to enter the system. If not I can increment the CycleCounter if there are more to check in the prioritized storage queue. My sense is this "should work". But it does not seem as efficient as one might like. I am curious if there might be a more direct way to access the entity's attributes without the search step. Thanks, Jim

Hi All, I am attempting to model a triage logic where I want to periodically, sequentially search the contents of a storage queue associated with a station and test the availability of resources to handle processing it. If the resources are not available in the system, I would like to move to the next entity in the queue and test it until all the current queue has been examined. The goal is to sequentially walk the queue organized by priority using the lowest value first of a state variable on the entities. Is there a suggested "best" way to approach this sort of problem? Essentially I want to do a loop to examine entities in a storage queue and transfer the best one with a match to available resources. I tried using a search based on index but ran into an error getting the state values of the entity and also seem to have challenges sorting the storage queue correctly. I would be grateful if someone has a basic example of such a sequential search. Thanks Very Much, Jim

I believe I got this working using the task sequence mentioned. Using a process with scan step seemed to do the trick so that the patient would block the ER until the OR freed. Thanks, Jim

Hi, I appreciate this information, but I have a similar situation and I am a bit confused by the answer. In this case for example, not sure what "stay post a delay" means. Does this imply a loop checking at intervals to see if a release condition is met, namely an OR is freed allowing completion of a state dependent process that frees the ER? It seems this logic might be common where availability of a downstream server blocks completion at an upstream service by blocking the space to process. I would be interested in seeing a simple example of the OR to ER logic model if someone has one or something similar. Thanks Much! Jim

This is just what I need! I was thinking of trying something like this. Thank you so much for your kind response! Best Regards, Jim

I have a project where I would like to see snapshots of the output state of the system at specific time points. For example I would like to see output reports at 12, 24, 36, 48 hours and so on. Ideally I would like to set up experiments where I can observe, say 100 runs at each run length and saving capacity on my PC might be nice. I was thinking I could set up a reference property for Run Length; however, it does not seem to have that option. Is there a way to do something like this? Thoughts would be appreciated! Thanks, Jim