SAS Simulation Studio 12.1, a component of SAS/OR 12.1 for Windows environments, adds several features that improve your ability to build, explore, and work with large, complex discrete-event simulation models. Large models present a number of challenges to a graphical user interface such as that of SAS Simulation Studio. Connection of model components, navigation within a model, identification of objects or areas of interest, and management of different levels of modeling are all tasks that can become more difficult as the model size grows significantly beyond what can be displayed on one screen. An indirect effect of model growth is an increased number of factors and responses that are needed to parameterize and investigate the performance of the system being modeled.
Improvements in SAS Simulation Studio 12.1 address each of these issues. In SAS Simulation Studio, you connect blocks by dragging the cursor to create links between output and input ports on regular blocks and Connector blocks. SAS Simulation Studio 12.1 automatically scrolls the display of the Model window as you drag the link that is being created from its origin to its destination, thus enabling you to create a link between two blocks that are located far apart (additionally you can connect any two blocks by clicking on the OutEntity port of the first block and then clicking on the InEntity port of the second block). Automatic scrolling also enables you to navigate a large model more easily. To move to a new area in the Model window, you can simply hold down the left mouse button and drag the visible region of the model to the desired area. This works for simple navigation and for moving a block to a new, remote location in the model.
SAS Simulation Studio 12.1 also enables you to search among the blocks in a model and identify the blocks that have a specified type, a certain character string in their label, or both. From the listing of identified blocks, you can open the Properties dialog box for each identified block and edit its settings. Thus, if you can identify a set of blocks that need similar updates, then you can make these updates without manually searching through the model for qualifying blocks and editing them individually. For very large models, this capability not only makes the update process easier but also makes it more thorough because you can identify qualifying blocks centrally.
When you design experiments for large simulation models, you often need a large number of factors to parameterize the model and a large number of responses to track system performance in sufficient detail. This was a challenge prior to SAS Simulation Studio 12.1 because the Experiment window displayed factors and responses in the header row of a table, with design points and their replications’ results displayed in the rows below. A very large number of factors and responses did not fit on one screen in this display scheme, and you had to scroll across the Experiment window to view all of them.
SAS Simulation Studio 12.1 provides you with two alternative configurations for the Experiment window. The Design Matrix tab presents the tabular layout described earlier. The Design Point tab presents each design point in its own display. Factors and responses (summarized over replications) are displayed in separate tables, each with the factor or response names appearing in one column and the respective values in a second column. This layout enables a large number of factors and responses to be displayed. Response values for each replication of the design point can be displayed in a separate window.
SAS Simulation Studio 12.1 enhances its multilevel model management features by introducing the submodel component (experimental). Like the compound block, the submodel encapsulates a group of SAS Simulation Studio blocks and their connections, but the submodel outpaces the compound block in some important ways. The submodel, when expanded, opens in its own window. This means a submodel in its collapsed form can be placed close to other blocks in the Model window without requiring space for its expanded form (as is needed for compound blocks). The most important property of the submodel is its ability to be copied and instantiated in several locations simultaneously, whether in the same model, in different models in the same project, or in different projects. Each such instance is a direct reference to the original submodel, not a disconnected copy. Thus you can edit the submodel by editing any of its instances; changes that are made to any instance are propagated to all current and future instances of the submodel. This feature enables you to maintain consistency across your models and projects.
Finally, SAS Simulation Studio 12.1 introduces powerful new animation controls that should prove highly useful in debugging simulation models. In the past, animation could be switched on or off and its speed controlled, but these choices were made for the entire model. If you needed to animate a particular segment of the model, perhaps during a specific time span for the simulation clock, you had to focus your attention on that area and pay special attention when the time period of interest arrived. In SAS Simulation Studio 12.1 you can select both the area of the model to animate (by selecting a block or a compound block) and the time period over which animation should occur (by specifying the start and end times for animation). You can also control simulation speed for each such selection. Multiple selections are supported so that you can choose to animate several areas of the model, each during its defined time period and at its chosen speed.