FlexSim Knowledge Base
Announcements, articles, and guides to help you take your simulations to the next level.
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Dear FlexSim user, Update: Please see the FlexSim Newsroom announcement here: FlexSim Answers to migrate to Autodesk Forums on April 25 | FlexSim Original First and foremost, thank you for being an active and valued member of our forum. Your contributions help make this community a valuable resource for everyone, and we truly appreciate your participation. As you may know, FlexSim was acquired by Autodesk in late 2023. As part of this transition, we will be migrating some of our tools, including this forum, to a new platform which we expect to be completed by May 2025. You will be able to access Autodesk forums here. What This Means for You: Seamless Knowledge Transfer – All existing forum content will be migrated, ensuring continued access to the wealth of knowledge shared by our community. A Community-Driven Experience – The forum will evolve into a more self-sustaining, peer-to-peer support hub. While FlexSim support engineers will still visit the forum, when possible, our goal is to empower users to help each other, making this a truly community-led space. Ongoing Support for Entitled Users – We will share more details soon on how eligible users can reach the FlexSim support team directly. For now, we encourage you to continue engaging with the forum as you always have. Your involvement is what makes this community thrive, and we’re excited to embark on this new chapter together. Stay tuned for more updates and thank you for being an essential part of FlexSim! Best, The FlexSim Team
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This model demonstrates a method of giving a task executor a set of tasks (or jobs) to accomplish in a specific sequence by referencing information stored in a global table. In this case, an operator needs to move boxes between queues in a very specific order. The global table defines the order of operations, with each row representing one job. The row contains necessary information about the job: the item to be moved and its destination. These jobs are to be carried out in order, row by row. First, Product1 will be moved to Queue1, then Product2 to Queue2, Product3 to Queue3, Product1 to QueueOut, and so on and so forth. Any modifications made to this table will directly modify the model’s behavior. The logic behind the process flow is relatively simple: a single token loops through a task sequence, with the operator completing a job with every loop. Assign Labels activities are used to get information about the job from the global table and attach that information to the token. The “Assign Labels: Get Table Data” activities reference the current row in the global table to access and store information about the current job (the item name and its destination). The “Assign Label: Item” activities use custom code to search through a group containing all the queues in the model until it finds the item matching the item name from the global table. The task sequence directs the operator to travel to the item’s queue, load the item, travel to the destination, and unload the item. The token’s labels contain the information that is needed for these activities. After this sequence is completed, the label “row” is incremented so that the next row in the table will be used for the following job. Although this demo model shows an operator moving boxes between queues, this method of acquiring data from global tables to define an order of operations can be used in a variety of other applications. GlobalTableDemo.fsm
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Run FlexSim "in the cloud"? Instead of provisioning a desktop or laptop PC that meets FlexSim's recommended system requirements, you may prefer for your FlexSim users to use a thin client PC which connects to a more powerful back end system that actually runs FlexSim. FlexSim does not test our products in such environments, so your user experience may vary. Meet the system requirements It is important that the remote system meet or exceed FlexSim's recommended system requirements. Usually for CPU and RAM that is not a problem. In the past, the biggest hurdle was typically graphics. Does the remote machine support hardware accelerated graphics, and support streaming those graphics to the thin client where the user is actually sitting? If the graphics are not accelerated, or if accelerated graphics can't be streamed to the user, then the system doesn't meet FlexSim's requirements and you may have a bad user experience. In the past In the past, provisioning such a system to meet FlexSim's requirements was quite a specialized combination of hardware and software. Even today not every cloud provider has the infrastructure to stream accelerated graphics. Our anecdotal experience is that such set ups are becoming more common among 3rd party cloud providers. Going forward Major players now seem to have mainstream support for hardware accelerated graphics: https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/elastic-graphics/ https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/windows/sizes-gpu https://cloud.google.com/gpu/ As mentioned above, FlexSim is not targeted to these environments and the software is not tested in these environments, so your mileage may vary. Conclusion With more and more cloud providers enabling hardware accelerated graphics, there is a chance that FlexSim could work well on a cloud-based platform. If you have tried running FlexSim remotely using one of these or another cloud provider, we'd love to hear your experience. Please comment below to let us know about your setup, what worked, and what didn't.
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"switch by case" is a stucture in many programming languages. It is a availbale in Flexscript. A case must be a number for a switch by case structure in Flexscript. A decide activity can switch even to string value cases. All you need is to rename the connector from a decision activity to a following activity. process_flow_by_case.fsm
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Greetings, I would like to share my latest FlexSim creation with the community, HUGE thank you to the flexsim overlords for creating such an awsome software https://youtu.be/WyfNS6vfLZE. G
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I have created the following model to use elevator for different floor. I am not sure what I have missed out that the elevator is not working. Please advise me. Thanks multi-floor.fsm David
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FlexSim 2020 Update 2 is available. If you have bug reports or other feedback on the software, please email dev@flexsim.com or create a new idea in the Development space. Release Notes Updated the run speed slider so you can customize the ratio of display units to real seconds. Moved object properties windows into the context sensitive Properties window (formerly known as Quick Properties). Added a new Quick Properties window that appears next to your cursor when double clicking on an object. Added a pop-out button to the Labels panel of the Properties window. Added a Dark theme for FlexSim's UI. Removed help manual from the installer and linked help to docs.flexsim.com. Created a separate installer for a local help manual. Added Unit edit buttons to more edit fields. Updated the Quick Library to match the current state of collapsed and expanded panels in the main library. Removed the View Settings window and moved all its options into the Properties window. Improved performance of Properties window and various other UIs. Added Object Property tables. Added Object class properties and methods to the Variant class in FlexScript. This removes the need to use .as(Object) if you know the treenode pointed at by a Variant is an Object. Added Object.resetPosition property. Added capture groups to the string.replace() method. Enabled several SQL clauses - NOT, NOT IN, DELETE FROM, INSERT INTO, and LEFT JOIN/LEFT OUTER JOIN. Added ARRAY_VAL() sql function for accessing a value in an array. Added unit conversions to the convert() command - convert(4.5, "ft/min", MODEL_UNITS). Improved performance of loading media by making it multi-threaded. Updated the default web server 3D view to stream using WebGL data instead of video. Added Color.fromPalette options to several Set Color popups. Added a pickoption for the Source's On Creation trigger for attaching items to an Object process flow. Disabled the beeping noise when pressing Enter in edit fields. Fixed the Create Object edit mode sometimes not creating objects and just exiting (like when clicking on the library when the User Manual was active). Fixed a draw issue with tables drawing bold text sometimes. Fixed a bug with window docking. Backwards Compatibility Note: the following changes may slightly change the way updated models behave. Changed updatehotlinks() to only repaint the view if it applies a node with a viewsyncupdate attribute of 1. The keywords VALUES an DELETE were added to the sql parser. This means that previous models that use the term VALUES, Values, values, DELETE, etc. will get an error because sql now sees it as a special keyword. If you get this error, just wrap your term with square brackets: [Values] to tell the parser to not interpret it as a sql keyword. Agent Added the Agent module to the Flexsim Installer. Enabled A* walls as static agents. Added a neighbors() function to the Agent API. Fixed social forces for agents not in model space. Fixed bugs with using A* bridges. AGV The join tool now joins in all cases, defaulting to a straight path if it can't solve for a curved path. Conveyor The join tool now joins in all cases, defaulting to a straight conveyor if it can't solve for a curved conveyor. Emulation Added Allen-Bradley connections. People Improved performance of state history tables. Fixed listening to travel events on a person created with the Create Person activity. Process Flow Added new Kinematics activities. Added new Warehousing activities. Added an Enabled checkbox to the Source activities so that you can turn them off. Consolidated Fixed Resource and Task Executer process flow types into a single "Object" type. Added a right-click menu option to the 3D view so a user can right-click on an object and add an Object process flow directly. Added an Object Flow field to the Create Object activity and added a pickoption for attaching items to an instanced flow. Changed double clicking on an activity to be more consistent with the 3D view and now opens the activity's properties window. This window now has a name edit field so you can still easily rename the activity. You can also slow double click to only open the old name edit field. Improved performance of activity properties windows.
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A.Hello everyone, Some people we very impressed by FlexSim in a logistics fair and they asked me why are we using Plant Simulation in stead of FlexSim ? I've never heard about this software before, so I had a look on youtube. And to be honest I was impressed by the 3D view and how easy was constructing an automated storage in few seconds without code. I'd like to ask if anybody have used this software ? And what do you think about it ? Thank you very much.
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Following attached Code is Useful as Performance Major to Find Out Total Simulation Time in Different Scenarios. treenode datanode = param(1); double tm = time(); return tm;
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A new feature has been added to our Answers Platform. In App notifications are now available for all users. These are instant notifications designed to work in coordination with or in place of email notifications. You'll now see a bell icon next to your avatar in the upper-right hand corner of your browser on the Answers website. In order for this location to start showing notifications, you will need to click on your avatar and choose 'My Preferences' Then click the Notifications tab in the top Navigation Bar. From here, you can choose to set certain actions to notify you instantly by selecting the radio button next to the action you would like to be notified on. Once there is content matching your notification settings, you'll see a red circle on the bell icon, as shown below: If you click the Bell icon, you will be redirected to a page showing all your recent notifications which will show you a summary of the notification as well as a link to the post:
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Preparation   You will need to be able to transfer plaintext XML license files to and from your offline computer.   Create manual return requests   Open FlexSim Software. In FlexSim's main menu, Go to Help > License Activation. Click the Advanced tab. Go to the Manual Return sub-tab. Each of your activated licenses is listed in the dropdown selector. Select a license you want to return. Click the Generate Request button. You will be prompted to save an XML file. Choose a location and filename to save your XML return request. Repeat for all licenses you wish to return, so that all your XML return request files can be transferred at one time.   Submit your manual return requests   Transfer your XML return requests to a computer with Internet access. From your Internet-connected computer, open a web browser and login to your FlexSim Account. Click the Licenses link in your FlexSim Account's page header. Click the Manual XML link in the submenu. Upload your XML file by dragging it onto the drop zone, or click the drop zone and browse to your XML file. Your uploaded XML request will be processed. Upon completion, you will be prompted to download the XML response. Download the response XML file. Repeat for any licenses you are manually returning, so that all your XML return response files can be transferred back to your offline PC at one time.   Process your manual return responses   Transfer your downloaded XML return responses to the offline computer you are un-licensing. In FlexSim, using the same licensing interface where you generated your request, click the Process Response button. Browse to an XML return response file. FlexSim should give you an indication of successful processing of your return, and your return will be complete. Repeat to process the XML return responses for any other licenses you are manually returning.   If you have any questions or problems, please search our Answers Community for possible solutions. There is a good chance someone else has already asked your question. Still not finding what you're looking for? Submit a new question and we'll check it out. If you're including any confidential information, such as license codes, be sure to mark your question as private! You can also contact your local FlexSim distributor for live phone, web, or email help.
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