Pipe Graphical Representation

Pipe Graphical Representation

The graphical display of the pipe has been designed to efficiently display the state of the logical pipe without impacting on model results. In addition run speed is not impacted by complex displays if they are not visible.

The pipe is drawn using a number of straight "sections" between the end Portals. Bend points may be used to shape curves. Parameters which affect the display are collected in the "Display Settings" sub menu.

Display Parameters

Display Resolution

This determines the amount of sections into which the pipe is "sliced" for display purposes, in effect determining how granular material flow in the pipe *appears*. It must be at least the number of bends in the pipe (otherwise the pipe cannot be accurately drawn) but typically a display resolution of at least 100 yields a much smoother result.

Border Thickness

Determines the thickness of the border lines of the pipe

Pipe Width

Determines the width of the pipe. Interesting effects occur with very wide and bendy pipes!

Activity Update

Determines the interval (in ms) over which "activity" highlights in the pipe are moved.

These are different coloured bars which "chase" down the pipe to highlight material movement.

The time is in terms of *real* milliseconds, independent of model run speed.

Activity Spacing

Determines the spacing of the "activity" highlights in the pipe.

Nice smooth activity effects can be attained using: large display resolution (200) or wide activity spacing (15) or fast activity update (50ms) or a model "Display Update Interval" which yields at least 10 screen updates a second (this depends on the models complexity, CPU and most frequent scheduled event).

Note that this will give a smooth effect even for a pipe with a single logical bin.

That is to say: If there are more bins than sections, some sections will show the average states of a number of bins; If there are more sections than bins, some sections will share the same bin.

Nominal Load Rate

This gives the pipe a reference from which compute its bin "occupancy" level.

This in turn is used to colour the sections when updating the pipe display.

Pipe Colours

These are in a separate sub-menu

Border

Pipe border lines

Empty

Colour used for section if bin level virtually 0 (< 1.0e-12)

Low

Colour used for section if bin level < 0.25 of nominal

Medium

Colour used for section if bin level < 0.75 of nominal

Full

Colour used for section if bin level >= 0.75 of nominal

Activity

Colour used for the chasing "activity" bars.

Pipe activity colour can be altered by referencing an attribute rather than a fixed value for each pipe. (ie: you can dynamically change pipe animation colour during a model run).

Set Defaults

The display settings "Set To Defaults" / "Set From Defaults" options respectively Set Defaults / Apply Defaults for the pipe graphical setting AND colour selections.

The defaults are used for newly created pipes during the current session.