Written by Glenn on Friday May 9th 2014 in SIMUL8 Tips, Technical Corner
SIMUL8 Tip – How to Use a Variable to Record Breakdowns
This week, we’re taking a step away from SIMUL8 2014 and looking at a feature that any Visual Logic enabled version can use.
We’re talking about the special variable called BREAKDOWN_TYPE: we will show you how to create a text variable with this name, and then demonstrate writing a named breakdown type to a spreadsheet when an activity breaks down.
We have also attached an example simulation below, so that you can see how this can be used. The simulation attached also contains the use of an onscreen button.
Please download and experiment with the model – we feel the best way to learn is to do!
Click here to download the example simulation.
Some key things to note about the attached model:
- Certain activities in the simulation have breakdowns that will be logged to an internal spreadsheet.
- For every activity that has a breakdown type allocated to it, there is “On Breakdown” Visual Logic that is called when the machine breaks down. This logic simply calls a more generic function “proc_BreakDown”, so that all of the logic is in one place and is easy to manage.
- The “proc_Breakdown” section of logic utilizes the BREAKDOWN_TYPE variable. Since this section of logic was called on a breakdown, the BREAKDOWN_TYPE variable will therefore hold the name of the specific breakdown which triggered the logic. We can then write this to our spreadsheet for recording.
The rest of the Visual Logic is commented as well, so if you are a new user then you might learn some other tips from browsing it!