topic Re: Create a sorter with 200 slots in FlexSim Forum

Create a sorter with 200 slots

t_paszkowski5KKVY — Wed, 10 May 2017 10:04:12 GMT

[ FlexSim 17.0.2 ]

Hi, I'm new on simulating with FlexSim and I'd like to have a help here. I have to create a sorter with 200 slots, which will sort items with 7 warehouses by number order. I want, so that items will go to first empty slots and next will go to combiner, where items will pack. If all of combiners will be busy, items will go after loop to starting point. I add, that each order can have different quantity of items.I guess, that I should use ProcessFlow, but I have first training only on June.

Re: Create a sorter with 200 slots

sam_stubbsYXX86 — Wed, 10 May 2017 15:57:08 GMT

Process Flow will definitely help in this situation. What I would do, is have a List of the 100 slots (you can initialize this at the beginning of the model in Process Flow as well.) Then when items reach a certain point on the conveyor, they pull the slot from the List based on whatever criteria you want. And then just do a conveyorsenditem command (this can be selected from the custom code activity in Process Flow), to send the item to the designated/pulled slot. Then you just need a "Max Wait Timer" of 0 on your PullFromList activity. This just tells FlexSim to pull a slot off the list, and if there aren't any available the max wait timer fires, and you can redirect the token to another different activity that will just send the Conveyor to the loop.

I've created a small example that demonstrates this. This example uses a Resource group instead of a list, but the concept is the same:

dploop.fsm

If you are unsure about Process Flow, I highly recommend going through the Process Flow tutorials in the manual. (User Manual > Tutorials > Process Flow) They will help you get a basic understanding of what Process Flow is, and you can set it up and connect it to your 3D model logic. I think you will find the lesson on Lists particularly helpful.

Re: Create a sorter with 200 slots

SimFlex_support — Wed, 10 May 2017 23:42:40 GMT

@Sam Stubbs

The attached model can't be opened in 17.1.2 and 17.0.5.

What's the reason of it?