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Welcome to this months newsletter! In this issue you'll find:

• A special offer on UK Training Courses
• An article by Laura Reid on Presenting Your Simulations
  

Presenting Your Simulations

When presenting your simulations to others you want your presentation to be professional, efficient and easy to follow.

The following SIMUL8 features will help you to do this.

Saved Views

Views are a way of saving a set of non-default ways of setting up the visual display of your simulation. They help you easily move round a simulation to show certain aspects of your simulation - perhaps starting of with a view of a full simulation and then zooming in to certain parts of it.

Manipulate the screen to the view that you require and select the Tools > Views > Save As New View. Assign the View a meaningful name.

The View is now saved and can be accessed by selecting the Tools > Views > Select View option or by using the CTRL and view number shortcut.

Save as many views as you need for your presentation.

Full Size Image

Sub-windows

The simulation window does not have to show all the detail in your simulation - maybe you have had to break an activity down in to several work centers but you don't want to let people see that. You can use a sub-window to hide those work centers.

With a complex simulation you may want to summarize your simulation at different levels. Achieve this by creating sub-windows and sub-windows within sub windows.....to any level of depth you require.

When a sub-window is closed its contents are represented by a single icon on its parent window.

Create a sub-window by dragging a box around the objects you would like in the sub-window and clicking the RIGHT mouse button. Choose: Create Sub-Window.

You can open a sub window by clicking on its icon. When a sub-window is closed and the mouse moves over its icon the mouse arrow changes to a special shape to indicate than the icon represents a window and not a single simulation object.

To change the icon used to represent a window or the title displayed on the window: Click the sub-window's S8 logo (just once so the menu appears) choose the Windows Properties option.

Route Arrows Always Displayed

Routing arrows show all possible routes a work item can take through a simulation.

The default in SIMUL8 is for the arrows to disappear when the Run button is pressed. You can choose to have route arrows always displayed when you press Run. To do this click on the drop down box on Design Mode on the toolbar and select 'Route arrows always displayed'.

Continuously Run Your Simulation

It looks good to have your simulation running while talking it through. If the simulation is going to reach the end of the results collection period before you are finished talking you can make it run continuously. As you press the run button hold down CTRL and SHIFT.

Reset Clock Display After Warm Up Time

It could be that displaying the warm up time on the clock could confuse or distract people.

Have the clock display restart from zero at the end of any warm up time by unchecking 'Include in displayed clock time' in the warm up period dialog:

SIMUL8 Spreadsheets

Sometimes you want to change parameters in your simulation - you want to demonstrate some 'what if' scenarios to your audience. However, it may confuse people to open the properties dialog for a work center and make the changes there. SIMUL8 spreadsheets are a great way for making parameter changes. The May 2003 newsletter contains info on how to read data from your spreadsheet into the simulation, how to format your spreadsheet and ways to access it.

Visual Data

It can be time consuming to enter menus and dialogs to display results during your presentation. Any text or numeric variable can be displayed on the simulation window. This is great for displaying onscreen results during a simulation run.

Click on Visual Data on the Graphics Palette and then click on screen. A drop down box will appear containing all the variables in the simulation:

Use the text tool on the Graphics Palette to add text beside the variables to give them meaning:

Display +

Results are easier to comprehend in a graph. You can use Display + to draw your own graph on screen and have it update as the run progresses, see August 2003 newsletter.

Your Audience

It's not just the features that will affect the success of your presentation but also how you pitch it. While preparing your presentation you should ask yourself the following questions about your audience:

• Do they already know what simulation is? If not, show a very simple example to introduce simulation - maybe the Simple Doctors Clinic in the SIMUL8 Examples Folder.
• What is their interest in the simulation? Make sure you satisfy that interest
• Are there varying levels of understanding and knowledge? Then maybe you should give separate presentations to each group.
• How technical are they? Make sure you pitch the presentation at the right technical level.
• How much should you tell them about the data inputted in the simulation? Perhaps you can show them a sample of the data in a formatted SIMUL8 spreadsheet.
• Will they be interested in seeing how your simulation was built? If so, it's quick and easy to build a simple model using the SIMUL8 building blocks.

Here are some hints and tips from our experience of showing simulations. Combining them with the features described above should help you to give the perfect presentation!

Hints & Tips

Here are some hints and tips from our experience of showing simulations. Combining them with the features described above should help you to give the perfect presentation!

• You can zoom to any degree of accuracy using the mouse wheel
• Draw attention to what the visuals are showing - don't assume people understand what the queue graphic means
• Always explain axes and lines on graphs
• Have the simulations you want to show in the File list, so you don't need to spend time searching through directories for them.
• If the simulation is not interesting looking on reset save it at another point. This means you open the simulation at an interesting point
• Save the simulation at the speed best for animation, so you don't have to spend time adjusting the speed bar.

If you any questions about these features or anything else to do with SIMUL8 email support@SIMUL8.com we'd be happy to help you out. (Remember technical support is free!)

Book any 2004 UK Public Training Course before the end of February and you'll get 20% off.

Call +44 870 850 8886 or email sales_team@SIMUL8.com for more information or to book.

If you have any questions generated from, or comments about this newsletter then email Newsletter@SIMUL8.com