Case stack

Each model in AVEVA Unified Supply Chain may have a variety of cases, many of which may only differ by one or two operating parameters. The Case Stack environment shows the differences between such cases. It allows you to see how the parameters vary in each of your cases.

Note: Case stacking is not available for scheduling cases or for analytics (each analytic is itself a stack of cases).
Only cases of the same type (for example, all planning cases) can be opened as a stack.

To open two or more cases in the Case Stack environment:

1. In the Supply Chain Models tab of the Model Explorer, select the model that contains the cases you want to open.

2. In the case tree, select the cases you want to open:

   • To select a contiguous group of cases, click the first case and then click the last case while holding the Shift key.

   • To select non-contiguous cases, click each case while holding the Ctrl key.

3. Do either of the following:

   • Click Open Stack in the Cases group of the Home ribbon tab.

   • Right-click and select Open from the context menu.

     The Case Stack environment opens.

     

Once in the Case Stack environment, you can select and clear check boxes in the Case Explorer pane to add or remove cases from the stack.

Most of the Case Stack environment is occupied by a Watch window. You can use existing watch sets in the supply chain model to monitor the results from each case, and create new watch sets to identify particular changes.

When setting up case stacks, bear these factors in mind to ensure the required connections are available in the supply chain model:

• Hierarchy is important in case stacking, as sub-cases inherit settings from their parents and can override these settings. See Manage Cases for an explanation of how cases relate to each other.

• If different stream routing logic is required in sub-cases, all possible routings must be configured in the master case. To control stream routing in individual cases, create different modes and set the capacity of process units for the individual modes.

• All cases share a common flowsheet which can only be edited in the master case. Individual process units in the master case can be deactivated by setting their maximum capacities to zero, but they must be present in the master case and have all the connections required in any subcases.

You can choose the run type (Simulate or Optimize) for each case in the stack from the Run Settings dialog box, opened by clicking Run Settings in the Modelling group of the Home ribbon tab. At the top of the dialog box, select a case from the Case list and a run type from the Run Type list. You can choose different run types for different cases.

For information on how to publish your data to file after optimization, see this topic.

Customize solution values display

You can customize the way result values are shown in the Watch window via the following toolbar icons:

• Click the icon to add a green background to the table cells showing solution values. The intensity of the background color is proportional to the cell value, allowing you to quickly compare values across cases.

• Click the icon to toggle the display of rows where the solutions values are the same for all cases. To the right of the icon you can set the tolerance, in percentage units, for considering two solution values identical.

Case stack charts

You can display several chart types by clicking the corresponding buttons in the Watch window toolbar.

Customize the graphs with the following controls:

• Watch Items: Enter a value in this field to limit the number of watch items displayed. For example, if you enter a value of 3, only the first three items in the watch set, starting from the top, will be shown in the graph.

• Transpose (): Click this icon to switch cases and watch items so that either set is plotted as series. This is not available for the bar chart.

• Legend (): Click this icon to toggle the display of the graph legend. This is not available for the bar and scatter chart.

Scatter chart

All chart types except the scatter chart automatically show the solution values for the selected watch set, and update whenever you select another set.

For the scatter chart you must explicitly choose what to plot via the controls at the bottom of the chart. From the list of available watch sets, select the items you wish to display on the x and y axes. Also select the relevant parameter to display, such as solution value or price. The parameter value is displayed in the watch item unit of measure.

If you require a third dimension, select the check box to enable the z-axis on the scatter graph. This will plot a bubble chart, where the size of the bubble is used to represent the value of the third dimension.