Capability Overview

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This is an overview of Planimate's capabilities.

User Interfaces and Displays

Planimate can be used to build self-contained applications or as a component of a larger system. Its animation window can be embedded in a dotNET application. Its inbuilt user interface compoenents include:

  • Attribute, Cell and Table Views
  • Dials
  • Interactive Graph Views
  • Portal and Panel Clicks and Drags
  • Dynamic visibility control of Paint, Table, Graph views
  • Paint Object Clicks
  • Object State Icons
  • Animation of logic / decision trees
  • Animation of resources over a map
  • Pipe Animation
  • Item clicks information popups
  • Pop up panels
  • Dialog boxes
  • Dynamically generated hierarchic menus and popups
  • Viewports
  • RTF text view/editing
  • Embedded media player control
  • Function key broadcasts
  • Mouse Hovers

Planimate can operate without a user interface, either in a scheduled batch run mode or as a back end simulation server.

Data Interchange

There are many options to getting data in and out of Planimate, including real time data feeds for live updates. Options include:

  • CSV/TAB delimited files
  • SQL Query using ODBC
  • DataSet2 files (encrypted, protected files)
  • XML packets via TCP/IP or UDP
  • Command line parameters
  • Data passed to and returned from a called DLL
  • Planimate dotNET API (Planimate DLL)
  • HTTP request received by internal server
  • HTTP request sent to a webserver
  • Dynamic loading and saving of images
  • System Clipboard
  • Parameters passed to a newly created subprocess

Simulation Engine

At Planimate's heart is a powerful simulation modelling engine enabling general

programming as well as discrete event simulation. The engine has been in development since

1989 with a focus on both performance and providing a robust framework which manages the

complexities of many parallel activities in a dynamic whole system model.

  • Scheduling/ordering of events with renegging
  • Dynamic changes to model topology
  • Dynamic creation of network nodes and links
  • Lookahead/commit/rollback paradigm is implicit
  • Support for tens of thousands of network nodes
  • Messaging and Broadcasting with completion wait
  • Calendar and Relative time modes of operation
  • Real time synchronisation for live display applications
  • Graphical flow based programming
  • Textual routine proramming with powerful functions
  • Expression language with boolean math and scientific functions
  • Compiler-less enabling in-place debugging
  • DLL calling interface designed for efficiency and large data exchange
  • String manipulation

Intra-model Communication Paths

A key to a model's success is the way physical object and information flows are represented. Planimate supports many powerful flow mechanisms:

  • Item flows with hierarchy
  • Attributes, Tables and Lists
  • Messages (like a phone call)
  • Broadcasts (like an announcement over a radio)
  • Carried Items
  • Wormholes
  • Track links, for with fine level control of train movements
  • Spatial links for transport corridors
  • Pipes which animate the movement of numerical data


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