Simulate your schedule

Schedule contains an advanced simulation engine designed to quickly simulate all the activities in your scheduling case.

Note: A new version of the simulator is available as a preview feature. You can use it instead of or together with the classic simulator. See this topic for more details.

The status of the simulation is shown on the status bar in the bottom left corner of the scheduling environment:

While a simulation is running, you can check its state of advancement by looking at the following information in the status bar:

• The percentage of completion.

• The date/time in the scheduling period up to which the simulation has advanced.

• A progress bar.

  

When a simulation is running, the Schedule user interface is still responsive, so you can keep examining and even editing values. If you edit a value before the simulation has finished, the simulation restarts from the point corresponding to the modified value.

When the simulation is completed, the elapsed time is shown in the status bar next to the Simulated message. If a simulation is canceled, the time spent until cancellation is displayed. The time until the end of the simulation is then displayed when the simulation is resumed.

In the Simulation Settings window, if you enable the Result Stream Interval(s) option, values are updated in the interface as the simulation progresses, allowing you to monitor the progress of the calculations. This makes it possible, for example, to abort the simulation as soon as you notice that a correction needs to be made, rather than having to wait until the simulation is complete.

Abort a simulation by clicking the icon, or pressing Shift + F5 or Shift + Ctrl + R. If you then resume the simulation, calculations resume from the interruption point, rather than from the beginning, unless in the meantime you have edited values earlier in the scheduling period.

Simulation modes

In the Simulation group of the Home ribbon tab you can choose between these simulation modes:

• Automatic. Automatic simulation mode simulates the schedule after every relevant change. Automatic modes detects the point from which it is necessary to simulate, and only simulates assets directly affected by this change after the relevant point in time. The Simulate button is always disabled in this mode.

• Manual. Manual simulation mode simulates the schedule only when you click the Simulate button, or press F5 or Ctrl + R. The Simulate button and the keyboard shortcuts are disabled if the last simulation is still valid, that is, when the Simulated message is shown in the status bar.

  

  Tip: Automatic simulation may impact performance with complex models, especially if you make frequent changes. Consider setting the simulation mode to Manual before making a large number of changes to your model.

When you select an asset filter from the Filter list, only the assets contained in that filter are simulated. You can also choose <All Assets> to simulate all assets in your case, or <Display Assets> to simulate only the assets currently shown in the user interface.

Change the simulation period

Change how much of the schedule simulation period is shown in the Schedule environment via the Simulation period slider in the Simulation group of the Home ribbon tab.

Move the slider to change the fraction of the simulation period that is shown. For example, if you move the slider to a value of 12 days, only the first twelve days of the schedule are shown. Check the text under the slider for the exact number of days in the simulation period that are shown.

As you move the slider, the page you are on reacts dynamically to the new simulation period. For example, rows disappear from the Tabular pane as you shorten the period.

Use the slider if you want to focus on a smaller portion of the full schedule. This also reduces the time needed for simulation, since only the portion of schedule you decide to show is simulated.

The slider is available in all Schedule environments except the Publish Environment, which has custom controls to change the simulation period.

Moving the slider does not change the Start Date and End Date values in the General page.

The slider position is a local setting. It is not shared with other users via synchronization.