What is the best way to find the correct activity in Process flow?

[axel_kohonen]

[ FlexSim 16.2.1 ]

Hi,

With process flow models that have a bit more functionality in one process flow one easily gets activities that have the same or similar names. Then when you want to check where you used some function you can find these activities by using the search. This works fine and you can open the code to look at it.

The problem is that I have not found a way to easily check what activity I am editing if I open the code this way. I can give the activities unique numbering which makes it easy for me to identify the nodes, but this requires extra work especially during the development stage when I add new activities and remove them until I have the final process flow.

Is there some way of seeing what activity the search has found? Opening the tree view with explore tree and selecting the node does not select it in process flow so that does not help. It would be great if the activity could be highlighted e.g. from the right click menu with a new option "Highlight activity in process flow" or similar. Or maybe the currently open code node could be highlighted in the process flow always?

Thank you!

Kind regards,

Axel

[Matthew_Gillespie · Accepted solution]

If you use the activity window to search for an activity (View Activities button in Quick Properties) there's a Center in View button. I think it has a binoculars icon.

[axel_kohonen]

Hi @Matthew Gillespie

Thank you for the comment. However, I want to search for text within the code of the activities and from view activities I can only search for the activities by name. The center in View works nicely if I know the activity name though, but it does not help me in this case.

Axel

[Matthew_Gillespie]

You can always request some features to improve this use case, but with the current tools I think your best option is a 2-step process. Use the tree search to find the activity name and then use the Activities window to find the activity.

[axel_kohonen]

Hi @Matthew Gillespie

Thank you! I think I will give the activities unique names (numbers before the names) to more easily find them using only one search.

Axel

[matt_long]

You'll like the updates to the activities window in FlexSim 2017. Activity properties are integrated into the window so you can immediately modify properties without having to switch back and forth with the Process Flow. Also the new searching mechanism allows you to search the activity properties for specific text or label names. It will even highlight the fields where the text was found.