ReleaseNotes:Feature Review December 2012
This review covers Planimate® versions 5.33d to 5.35r.
In 2012, Planimate's capabilities continued to mature and expand, opening up new frontiers of application.
Model Editing
Debug Log Window
An event logging system and associated window makes debugging complex models easier as it can collect and display many events during a run. The modeller has the ability to dynamically re-filter the event display in many flexible ways as the order of events, broadcasts, messages and even changes to data is browsed.
Broadcast Item Attributes
The item class context menu enbles auto-population of item attributes as needed by a selected system broadcast.
Modeller's Palette
A new modeller customiseable palette enables jump buttons and broadcats to be readily acessable whilst developing a model.
Flow Editor
The flow editor has been rewritten and now includes more useful tips, easier to see lines and an undo.
Dropping a new object over a flow arrow will insert it into the flow.
Broadcast and Message Entry Click Diagnostics
Clicking on Entriss shows the last time and source for an event.
End User Experience
Tables hover tracking can now send a broadcast.
Planimate based applications start quicker and the about box can be shown whilst the model is loading.
The model can now detect the user clicking on items.
The names of individual objects can be hidden/shown dynamically. This is useful in zommable map displays. The font scaling for object names can also be set.
A "Item Follow" mechanism enablesg an item's position on a spatial link/track to be used to adjust the position of a map, effectively keeping the item centred whilst the map moves under it. Map updating has been optimised and is smoother. A new operation can set the position and scaling of an object together.
Track Modelling
Trains and tracks can have length properties. Animation of train length is supported either visual only (no impact on model run which continues to use loop delays) or incorporation of train length into track decision logic.
A modeller can add and remove static routes under model control )AddStaticRoute(), RemoveStaticRoute()).
Graphics
Log Driven Graphs have an option to only show overlays in their configuration table.
All graph types now support double-buffered drawing where changes to the graph are drawn offscreen and updated flicker-free to the display. Unnecessary recalculation of graph data has been minimised to speed up graph update.
Scale ranges for gantt and traingraphs can be using a TableViewProperty. The Log Driven Graph RHS scale can be set when RHS scales are in use.
Graphs fully support RGB colours.
Improvements to editing column overlay graphs. Mode enhancements including side-by-side vertical bar.
Gantt Views support layer-ordering of blocks and the offsetting/sizing of individual bars, enabling sophisticated event views to be generated.
The Map View Paint object can now fetch its tiles from a DB file, avoiding the need to distribute thousands of small tile files.
Run Engine
Pipes support additional logging of load/unload quantities which is useful for flow control and collecting operational statistics.
Pipe event broadcasts have been enhanced and are generated in a manner that doesn't overwhelm the model.
Managing multiple pipes is simplified by the s.PipeTableRow and "OBJID Column" pipe setting which Planimate uses to to map a pipe to a row in a pipe configuration table.
It is possible to call a DLL function from within an expression. This is very useful when used with the Distribution Dialog's new "Expression" mode as it enables use of externally provided number distributions.
A separate Panel Visible broadcast enables a panel to know when it becomes visible including when it is in a viewport or popup window.
The model can now query the stop time of the previous run using s.LastRunStopTime
Modeller can set a pause after an advance to time.
Platform Founddation
Planimate now compiles with three compilers under Windows (Visual Studio '98, Visual Studio 2008 and gcc). A command line version of Planimate (no UI, batch runs only) runs under Linux and Android.
This enables future applictions in both handheld devices and cloud based model runs.
Multi-monitor setups where the monitors have different sizes are better supported particularly with viewports.
The Windows 8 preview exposed an issue with list views which has been fixed.