Simulation Studio

Simulation Studio

Robot warriors, start your scripting. This program lets you build your own simulated robot or build on popular robots such as Boe-Bot, SumoBot, and the Toddler (all from Parallax.) The coolest thing about this program is that you can edit scripts and add components or electrical connections all without interrupting the robot simulation. The interface for Simulation Studio is well-designed and intuitive. What’s more, a complete tutorial file and sample projects get you building in no time. Though the program runs just fine on average PC setups, you only get 30 seconds to play with the simulation in the trial version. For serious robot fans, this is a good program to get your robotic arms around.

The graphical user interface for SAS Simulation Studio, shown above, uses a hierarchical structure to assist in organizing your work. The top level is the project, a collection of models and experiments that correspond to each system being studied. Within each Project window you can create one or more Model windows in which to build simulation models.

The Block Template Display is populated with modular blocks used in building simulation models (instantiating and connecting via drag-and-drop) in a Model window.  The extensive set of blocks provided covers the creation and disposition of multiple classes of entities, queues, servers, and routing devices, data input and generation, numeric and graphical monitoring and reporting, the use of resources, and other functional areas. You can select groups of blocks in a model and assemble them into a “compound block” for further use in your models.

In each project you can create one or more Experiment windows, which provide you with an organized way to initialize, plan, and coordinate multiple runs of your simulation models. At a minimum you can specify the start time, end time, and number of replications to run for each version of a model. If you have defined factors (parameters to initialize) and responses (metrics to record) for your model, you can use the Experiment window to investigate the effects of varying factor values on responses.Simulation Studio is a Java-based SAS application in SAS/OR designed for modeling and analyzing systems through the use of discrete event simulation. SAS Simulation Studio, experimental in SAS/OR 9.2, is the successor to QSIM, SAS/OR’s longstanding discrete event simulation application. SAS Simulation Studio features a graphical user interface that requires no programming and provides all the tools needed for building, executing, and analyzing discrete event simulation models. While a comprehensive set of modeling tools is an important attribute of a simulation software application, advanced analysis tools are arguably just as important. As mentioned above, analyzing output from discrete event simulations often can require the use of advanced statistical methods. SAS Simulation Studio is designed to interact with both SAS and JMP for statistical analysis of simulation results. Data generated by a model can be saved as a SAS data set or as a JMP table for later analysis. The graphical user interface for SAS Simulation Studio, shown in Figure 1, uses a hierarchical structure to assist in organizing your work. At the top level of this hierarchy is the notion of a “project.” A project is a collection of models and experiments that correspond to each system being studied. Within each Project window you can create one or more Model windows in which you can build simulation

Design of Experiments and JMP Integration

For a model with defined factors that represent model parameters and responses that represent model performance metrics, the goal is to create and collect enough data to characterize the effects of the factors on the responses. This requires that you create multiple experimental design points, each specifying factor settings and the number of replications for which the simulation must be run and data collected.  This process is referred to collectively as design of experiments.

SAS Simulation Studio, through the Experiment window, supports both manual and automated design of experiments. Manual design of experiments simply means that you create the experimental design points and determine how many replications should be run for each point. This is useful if you need to make a direct comparison of a small number of different versions of the model or if you want to carry out a highly specialized experimental design.

For automated design of experiments, SAS Simulation Studio integrates with JMP.  A single command invokes the custom designer in JMP to create a set of design points that is automatically passed to SAS Simulation Studio.  You can modify or augment this design using either JMP or SAS Simulation Studio.

Stationary and Mobile Resources

SAS Simulation Studio provides stationary resources (represented by blocks such as queues, servers, delays) that have fixed locations in the model, but also supports the notion of mobile resources, which are created during the simulation run and can flow through the model just as entities do.  Mobile resources can carry attributes and are processed by the same blocks that process entities, and can be seized by entities as required.  Mobile resource availability levels and operational status can be controlled via the scheduling features of SAS Simulation Studio.

Monitoring Model Execution and Analyzing Simulation Results

In SAS Simulation Studio, several blocks are dedicated to producing graphical analysis of the simulation results, both as the simulation model runs and at the termination of a run. These displays can be useful when debugging or tuning a model, or for single runs of models.

SAS Simulation Studio also provides a number of blocks that can collect data during simulation runs so that the data can be stored for later and more extensive analysis. You may choose whether data is to be stored by default as SAS data sets or as JMP tables. You can then use either SAS or JMP, respectively, to carry out analysis of the stored data.

Automation Studio™ is a unique design and simulation software covering all project/machine technologies including fluid power, electrical, controls, HMI and communications through the entire product lifecycle. It helps to easily combine these various technologies in order to design, document and simulate complete systems.