topic Single source with different flow items and colors for each item? in FlexSim Forum

Single source with different flow items and colors for each item?

christian_c21 — Tue, 12 Dec 2023 04:04:38 GMT

[ FlexSim 23.2.1 ]

How can I use a single source to follow a 1 hr schedule that creates a total of 500 items. The items are boxes, cylinders , sphere. The amount of spheres & cylinders have different triangle distributions and the boxes are the remainder of the 500. All 3 flow items can be either red, blue, or black and the items have equal probability of being one of the colors. How can this be done?

Re: Single source with different flow items and colors for each item?

joerg_vogel_HsH — Tue, 12 Dec 2023 06:46:22 GMT

You cannot achieve a total discrete sum just by a statistical distribution. You need to integrate a balancing mechanism that adjust distribution parameters dynamically. Or you leave the path of total randomness and you let draw 500 values statistical distributed every hour that you scale to fit into an hour by a factor build from sum of all values and an hour.

Re: Single source with different flow items and colors for each item?

christian_c21 — Tue, 12 Dec 2023 07:00:02 GMT

Can you attempt this in a flexsim file so I can fully understand what you mean

Re: Single source with different flow items and colors for each item?

moehlmann_fe — Tue, 12 Dec 2023 07:25:28 GMT

To distribute a known number of types randomly, I'd first create an array with all types that should be assigned, then choose a random entry from that array each time an item is created and remove that value from the array.

Since the colors are independent, you could use the "Color by Case" option with a uniform distribution as the case value.

type-from-array.fsm

Re: Single source with different flow items and colors for each item?

jason_lightfoot_adsk — Wed, 20 Dec 2023 15:53:06 GMT

Hi @Christian_c21, was Joerg Vogel's answer helpful? If so, please click the "Accept" button at the bottom of their answer. Or if you still have questions, add a comment and we'll continue the conversation.

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