Nodes

This page is available only if you have a valid Spiral Network license.

For more information about checking for installed licenses, see the Configure your Licenses topic. Contact AVEVA support (spiral.support@aveva.com) for information about obtaining new licenses.

In the Nodes page you can view and add sites where network activities occur. See Locations and Nodes for more information on the concept of node.

Each node is associated to a location. The latitude and longitude of the location are used to determine the placement of the location on the map.

A node can also be associated to a market. The market can be used to define which price from a price set is used at the particular node.

Nodes can be of four types:

• A Supply node is a source of material. Supply nodes can be the origin of transport links.

  A supply node could be an oil field, supplying raw crude oil for a production price. It could be an ethanol supplier supplying blending component for its purchase price, or it could be a refinery producing finished products at their production cost. In this last case the original supply of crude and other materials would not be present in the model, and its cost encapsulated in the production cost of the finished product.

• A Demand node is a destination for material. Demand nodes can be the destination of transport links.

  A demand node could be a geographic region with its different demands of product. It could be a specific customer, with a specific product grade requirement.

• A Terminal node is a transport point for material. Terminal nodes can be origins or destinations for transport links.

  A terminal could handle any material routed to it via its transport link, or a specific set of traded materials.

  Terminals must have at least one associated terminal inventory. As soon as a terminal has one inventory, it becomes restricted to only handling materials with available registered inventories.

  For example, a terminal may handle jet and diesel fuel. If an inventory of diesel is added, a corresponding inventory of jet must also be available in order for the materials to be both handled by the site.

• A Plant node is a transport and transformation point for material. Plant nodes can be origins or destinations for transport links.

  Plant nodes can be associated with workspace cases which represent the transforming capabilities of the site. When associated with a case, the node will take its supplied materials and transform them to products according to the capabilities and constraints defined in the case. This will result in products which can then be moved out from the plant.

  Plant cases may also have inventories, and so act like terminals. These inventories are separate to the other inventories within the model and must be handled within the plant cases.

  See Plants for more information on plant nodes.

  Note: Only single demand, supply, terminal or plant operations occur at a node. If a location is capable of more than one of these, it must have each of the separate nodes, and these nodes must be connected via transport links, even though they are at the same physical site.
  For example, Lake Charles refinery processes material; therefore it is a plant node. The plant must be supplied with material, so at this location there is a supply node, and there must be a transportation link between the supply node and plant node. It sells material, so there must also be a demand node here, and there is tank storage, so it is also a terminal node. Refineries and other processing locations typically have all four nodes.
  The refinery buys ethanol from the external supplier CornInc. Although this is a plant with storage, this is not important to the current network, as they are not controlled by this company, and so CornInc is only a supply node.

Add and remove nodes

To add a node, do either of the following:

• Click one of the Add buttons in the Nodes group of the Home ribbon tab, depending on the type of node you want to add.

• Right-click anywhere in the grid and choose one of the Add entries from the context menu.

A new row is added to the grid. You can then edit the row cells to customize the new node.

To remove one or more nodes, follow these steps:

1. Select the rows corresponding to the nodes you want to remove.

2. Do either of the following:

   • Click Delete Node in the Nodes group of the Home ribbon tab.

   • Right-click anywhere in the grid and choose Delete Node from the context menu.

3. Click Yes in the conformation dialog box that appears. The nodes are removed from the grid.

Note that, when a node is removed, any attached supply items, demand items, plant items or terminal items are not removed.

Show differences with the parent case

Whenever a value in the row is different from the value in the parent case within the model, the unnamed column next to the Active column shows a double arrow icon () . Note that this column may not be present in all views.

The Deltas group of the Home ribbon tab lets you further manage these differences:

• Click the Show button to display a blue triangle icon in the top right corner of every cell whose value overrides the value in the parent case. This allows you to pinpoint the specific cells with overridden values, rather than whole rows.

  • A dark blue triangle means that the value is different from the parent case value.

  • A light blue triangle means that the value is the same as in the parent case, but has been entered manually, so it is still treated as an override. Future changes in the parent case value will not be reflected in the subcase value.

    

• Click Restore to change the values of the selected cells back to those of the parent case. You can also right click and choose Restore from the context menu.

  Tip: To show all the differences between cases within a model, see Compare Cases.
  To merge differences across cases, see Update Cases.

Customize the grid

Customize the grid from the Grid group of the Home ribbon tab:

• Click Find to show or hide a text field at the top of the grid to filter the grid contents. Type in the text field to show only the rows with text matching what you have typed. The matching text is highlighted in the grid. See Filters for more details.

• Click Columns to open a small dialog windows where you can drag column headers to remove columns from the grid. You can then drag the headers back to the grid to restore the columns. See Add and Remove Columns in Manage Columns for more details.

• Choose a View from the list, or click the cogwheel icon to remove a view or save any changes. See Views for more details.