Multi blend environments

You can create, modify and optimize blends of each type (feed blends, product blends, pipeline blends) by opening the corresponding Single Blend Inspector. However, that limits you to working on a single blend of each type at a time. Using instead a multi blend environment, you can inspect, edit and optimize all the blends of a given type in your schedule.

Open a multi blend environment

There are two ways to open a Multi Blend Environment:

From the Model Explorer

1. In the Supply Chain Models tab, select the model containing the scheduling case you are interested in.

2. In the list of cases, select the scheduling case.

3. In the Cases group of the Home ribbon tab, click the lower half of the Open button. A menu appears.

4. Choose the environment you want to open.

From a scheduling case

5. Click on the Environments ribbon tab.

6. In the Environments group, click the button corresponding to the environment you want to open.

Configure a multi blend environment

A multi blend environment is composed of panes you can organize to suit your workflow, much like you would do with a Display. You can choose which panes to show from the Panes group of the Home ribbon tab.

Several of these panes, like the Gantt pane, the Charts pane and the Diagnostics pane, are the same as in the main scheduling environment. The other panes are described in the topics dedicated to each multi blend environment.

You can move, dock and undock the panes as you like, and the resulting layout will be preserved after you close a multi blend environment. If you want to return to the default layout, click the Reset Layout button in the Panes group of the Layout ribbon tab.

The Format group of the Layout ribbon tab offers you more way to customize the environment:

• Change the Decimals value to set the number of decimal places used for flow rates, amounts and so on.

• Choose the Time Zone used to show dates and times in the environment. Note that this control changes only how times and dates are displayed. It does not change the underlying time zone of the plant, which is defined in the Duration section of the Settings page.

Filter blends

By default, a multi blend environment will list all the blends of the corresponding type in your scheduling case. For example, the Multi Product Blend Environment will show all the product blends.

If you want to work on, and optimize, just a selection of blends, you can do so via the Filter group of the Home ribbon tab.

Select the check boxes next to the Start and End fields to include just the blends after or before a particular time and date, respectively. Click the button to edit the time and date. As soon as you activate either option, the blends listed in the Blends pane change according to the filter conditions.

You can also filter blends according to particular assets in your model:

• In the Multi Feed Blend Environment, select the check box next to the Assets field to list only the blends feeding the listed assets. Click the button to choose the assets you want to include.

• In the Multi Product Blend Environment, choose a blender from the Blender drop-down to list only the blends originating from that blender.

• In the Multi Pipeline Blend Environment, choose a pipeline from the Pipeline drop-down to list only the blends originating from that pipeline.

You can easily set the Start and End filters to the start and end time of a particular blend. In the Blends pane, right click on the row corresponding to the blend and choose Set Time Filter from the context menu. The Start and End filters in the Filter ribbon group are activated and their values set to the start and end times of the blend.

Refresh a multi blend environment

Adjustments to the schedule outside the Multi Product Blend environment (for example updates within the main Schedule environment via the Gantt chart) can be synchronized back to the current Multi Product Blend environment by clicking the Refresh button in the Modelling group of the Home ribbon tab.

Warning: Refreshing a Multi Blend Environment will replace any changes you have made and not yet applied to the schedule.