With SIMUL8 we’ve always tried to make it really easy to build up your simulations,
and use the graphics in the simulation to truly analyze your system.
With SIMUL8 2016 we’ve added a new feature which is called the conditional queue colors
or the queue color rules. What this does is allow you to add certain conditions to your
queues so when they’re actually happening in the simulation the queues will visibly
change color.
By default you may notice that the queues just rise and fall based on their stock level
and stay a consistent color but with this you can now analyze the current contents of
the queue as well as the average wait times and highlight them in different colors so
you can analyze what’s happening at important areas in your simulation.
In this example we’re going to look at the queue between activity 2 and activity 3.
As this is being fed from three different locations we know that there is lots of activity here
so we want to keep a close eye on what’s happening with it.
In order to apply the color rules first you must select the queue,
navigate to the graphics tab of the ribbon
and on the far left hand side you will see there is a display style for the queue.
Currently this feature applies to the tank, block and graph styles.
In this example we’ll use block.
In the queue graphics dialog you can do things like change the size of the queue. In this
case I’ve left it at 32 x 32 so it matches all of the other objects in the simulation.
There’s a new button here in SIMUL8 2016 for the color rules,
so we’ll go ahead and open those and show you how these rules are created.
The first thing you’ll see is the rule that you want to choose.
It could be either the current contents of the queue. For example: If you’re looking
at a stock level and you don’t want it to fall below a certain amount. Or that you’re
looking out for bottenecks and you want to make sure the queue doesn’t reach a certain threshold.
Or we can look at the average wait time of the queue. Perhaps when you want to easily
identify when work items are starting to build up, or when they’re taking too long to process
through the queue or the rest of the system.
In this example we’re going to stick with looking at the current contents of this queue.
The next thing you’ll notice is that there’s a default color. This will be the color of
the queue presuming none of the conditions that you create have yet been met.
In this case let’s go ahead and set that to green.
On the right hand side of the dialog there’s a ‘New’ button to create new rules.
Let’s go ahead and create two for this example.
For each rule you have a drop down of the operator. Whether that’s ‘less than’,
‘less than or equals to’, ‘greater than’, ‘greater than or equals to’, or simply ‘equals to’.
You also have an input. In the case of current contents this is the number
of items in the queue. Or for average wait time, is the time in minutes, hours or whatever
your simulation is set to.
And finally you have the color; whenever that rule is met the queue will change to that color selection.
In this case we’re looking to identify if the queue is breaching a certain amount so we’ll set ‘greater than’ for both rules.
We’ll choose some values here of 25 and 50.
Now finally, we just want to make sure our colors match our rules. So, we will choose
yellow if our queue reaches a value of 25 and red if it reaches a value of 50.
There’s also a test value down here so you can ensure that your rules are working correctly.
You can enter in values to ensure that the colors are matching up with your rules above.
Each rule also does have a selector should you want to select a specific rule and erase
it from your simulation.
So let’s go ahead and click ‘OK’ and apply this color rule to our queue.
So you’ll notice that the queue is green, that is the default color and as soon as it
reaches the value of 25 it turns yellow, and finally when it reaches 50 it turns red.
This will allow you – if you’ve got hundreds of queues in a simulation – to easily pick
out the important ones at a glance just by referencing the color rules and what color
the queue currently is during your run.