How to estimate the number of dogs with motor + sync PnF dog positions + adjust dog for continuous loop

[guiroehe]

Hello,

FlexSim's manual (https://docs.flexsim.com/en/25.1/Reference/PropertiesPanels/ConveyorPanels/Motor/Motor.html) states that when the "Adjust Dog Gap for Continuous Loop" the "motor will calculate the total length of the loop based on the combined lengths of the connected Power and Free conveyors and will adjust the dog gap of each conveyor so that the total length of the loop divides evenly by the dog gap. For example, if the total length of a motor's conveyors adds up to 100.2 meters, and the dog gap is 1.0 meters, the motor will adjust the dog gap of each conveyor to be 1.002 meters (100.2 / 100), so that the full loop makes up exactly 100 dogs. The algorithm rounds to the nearest number of dogs. "

When looking at the motor object, I see a treenode under stats/totalLoopDistance. Following the explanation above:

1. Is this the value used to estimate the number of dogs?

2. If the estimated number of dogs is 1290.8, I assume it will be rounded to 1291; however, this means that the overall dog pitch is lower than the established by the input parameter. Is that reasoning correct?

Thank you.

[moehlmann_fe · Accepted solution]

Both of those assumptions seem to be correct. What I did to check is to look at the "dogNum" parameter that is available in the catch condition.

The dog positioned at the start of the first conveyor in the loop would have the highest number and thus represent the total number of dogs in the loop. I do not know what the "groupNum" and "groupMemberNum" signify though.

[guiroehe]

Hi, @moehlmann_fe ,
thank you for the confirmation!
AFAIK, the other two parameters are used when one creates a complex fixed-interval pattern. For instance {20.0in, 7.5in}, the first value representing a carrier length while the second representing a gap/pitch. In this case the number of dogs would be twice the number of repeated patterns, the groupNum would be the equivalent of a dogNum for a simple pattern, and the groupMemberNum would represent the relative position of a specific dog on a specific groupNum.

I hope this helps.

Tank you very much.

[moehlmann_fe]

Hi, @guiroehe ,

the group number being used for more complex patterns makes sense. Thank you for the insight. I had never worked with those so I completely forgot that this was even a possibility.