Cut Your Development Time with On-Screen Shortcuts

When you are immersed in simulation model development, little conveniences can make all the difference. During the debugging process, it is common to run the model for some time, flip back to one or more Information Store (IS) sheets, perhaps change something, and then start the whole process again.

To help save time, we often create a 'Control Panel' sub-window containing quick links to important information as well as to dynamically updated statistics of interest. This is especially true for small to mid-sized models that may not have a full-fledged user interface attached. A simple control panel is quick to put together, yet it saves development time and serves as a useful reference point for the model's end user.

In a small healthcare clinic simulation I'm working on, I have several reference IS spreadsheets. For example, there are sheets for - among other things - appointments, a detailed patient log, and examination times. I quickly got tired of having to open the Information Store, select the sheet I was interested in, press 'Properties', and finally 'View' to get to the information I was after. Granted, it is only four clicks, but when you've got many details to debug in a large model, even one extra click gets old after awhile. In just a few minutes I created a simple control panel like the following to speed up my access to commonly used information. Clicking on any of the titles in the control panel will bring up the associated information store item.

On Screen Objects, Step-by-Step

Let's use my patient log as an example. In this log, I keep details about every patient that passes through the simulated clinic. This is useful for both debugging purposes and for analysis. Needless to say, I have to access it often.

Step 1. Create a BUTTON Information Store Variable.

Create a new Information Store variable, setting its type to text. Name the variable BUTTON - and I mean that literally. If you name it anything other than BUTTON, none of this will work. Close out of the Information Store dialog.

Step 2. Place the shortcut on the screen.

Insert a text box on the screen. Using the graphics palette, select the Insert Text Box button and drag to create a text box of the desired size. Type in the text for your link. Mine just says Patient Log. By the way, if you later want to rearrange your links on the screen, it can be helpful to use the Ignore Hyperlinks option from the shortcut menu (right click) to avoid triggering the hyperlinks until you get everything situated.

Step 3. Fill in the hyperlink information.

Hold down the CTRL key while you double click on the text box you created in Step 2. When you do, you should expect to see the following dialog. Instead of entering in a full http:// address as you would for many hyperlinks, type in a meaningful phrase for the purpose of this link. I've typed in ShowPatientLog. Be sure to remember exactly what you typed. You'll need it in just a minute. Click OK.

Step 4. Create code to open the correct item.

Our next task is to create On Button Click Logic to open the appropriate item whenever the hyperlink we just set up is clicked. On Button Click Logic is a special segment of Visual Logic that SIMUL8 executes whenever a button is activated in SIMUL8 (see Learning SIMUL8: The Complete Guide for more details).

Two things happen every time the user presses a button (SIMUL8 considers hyperlinks to be a kind of button). First, the special information store variable, 'BUTTON', that we set up back in Step 1, is updated with the name of the button pressed. In this example, as soon as the user clicks on the text box containing the words 'Patient Log,' the BUTTON information store variable will contain the text 'ShowPatientLog.'

Next, the On Button Click Logic is activated and run. In that logic, we'll need to insert commands to check the current contents of the BUTTON variable and then display the appropriate sheet. To open the OnButtonClick logic for editing, use the Tools / Visual Logic Events / Other Events submenu.

Once you've got the On Button Click Logic open, you'll need to add a couple of simple commands. Right click inside the Visual Logic window to add commands. First, add an If statement to check which button or hyperlink was pushed to trigger the On Button Click logic. In our example, the If statement will read 'If BUTTON= "ShowPatientLog"'.

In order to get SIMUL8 to show a given sheet, we need to make use of two commands, Set Main Sheet and Display Main Sheet. SIMUL8 can only display one sheet at a time, known as the Main Sheet. But this isn't any significant limitation, because you can always change the Main Sheet on the fly. Right click inside the VL window to add a command as always. You'll find both of these commands under the Command/ Simulation/Sheet submenu. My patient log is an information store sheet (hence the 'iss' prefix) called 'issPatientLog'. If you are creating more than one on-screen shortcut, your On Button Click Logic will include multiple IF statements. Your code should look something like the following:

Step 5. Test the link.

Now. all we have to do is test that the link works. Click on the hyperlink and you should be presented with the item you wished to see.

All done. This may seem like a lot of steps, but that's only because we've written it out in excruciating detail. It goes by very quickly and you should find the time well spent, as it will speed up all of your testing and debugging efforts. With a little creativity you should be able to find many applications of this simple trick.

You will find more details on this and many other special uses of SIMUL8's powerful capabilities in Learning SIMUL8: The Complete Guide