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Matthew Gillespie posted Nov 6, '20 anthony.johnson edited Nov 20, '20

FlexSim 2021 Beta Available

FlexSim 2021 Beta is available. (Updated 19 November 2020)

To get the beta, log in to your account at www.flexsim.com, then go to the Downloads section, and click on More Versions. It will be at the top of the list.

If you have bug reports or other feedback on the software, please email [email protected] or create a new idea in the Development space.

Release Notes

Added a Model Parameter Table tool.
Added a Performance Measure Table tool.
Added an Empirical Distribution tool.
Added a Web Page tool.
Upgraded html views from WebKit to Chromium Embedded Framework.
Added a Map FlexScript API.
Added a JSON FlexScript API.
Added Object.getProperty() and Object.setProperty() methods to the Object FlexScript API.
Moved dashboard properties windows into the context sensitive Properties window.

Backwards Compatibility Note: the following changes may slightly change the way updated models behave.

The Experimenter and Optimizer now use Model Parameter and Performance Measure Tables. Existing experiments and optimizations are no longer compatible and are discarded by the model upgrade process.
Fixed the PowerPoint.Presentation.create() and PowerPoint.Presentation.open() method syntax.
Due to Chromium's multi-process architecture, the FlexScript command callwebscriptmethod() and JavaScript function fireFlexsimEvent() are now asynchronous and do not return values directly.
To get the return value of fireFlexsimEvent(), you can now pass a callback function as the last parameter:
```
fireFlexsimEvent("myEvent", param1, param2, function(result) { alert("result: " + result); });
```

AStar

Added a Strict Diagonals setting to make travelers travel better around corners.

Conveyor

Added a Mass Flow Conveyor.

Backwards Compatibility Note: the following changes may slightly change the way updated models behave.

Removed Conveyor Types.

People

Added a Remove Statistically Only checkbox to the Remove Person activity.
Updated the Statistics Properties panel to display HC states.

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SudheerReddy commented · Nov 06, 2020 at 02:04 AM

@Matthew Gillespie Added Web Tool ? Is that means we can FlexSim web Server ?Instead of downloading extra FLexSim Webserver.exe

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Matthew Gillespie ♦♦ SudheerReddy commented · Nov 06, 2020 at 02:31 AM

No, it means you can create HTML web pages within the software.

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Phil BoBo ♦♦ Matthew Gillespie ♦♦ commented · Nov 06, 2020 at 05:25 PM

You can use those web pages in conjunction with the FlexSim Web Server to create a custom website of multiple pages as the web interface to your model.

The Web Page tool makes it easier to define and test those pages within your model.

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David Seo commented · Nov 07, 2020 at 01:17 AM

I and my customers hope each items in the release note will be written more detail including screen capture and usage examples and what's the benefit when using the new released edition.

We should make and need the current customers to understand the benefit of using the upgraded new edition flexsim. But the most customers can't understand it via a only the one row explained feature.

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Phil BoBo ♦♦ David Seo commented · Nov 09, 2020 at 02:19 PM

@Markus Cueva

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Matthew Gillespie ♦♦ David Seo commented · Nov 09, 2020 at 08:10 PM

@Seung Yong Seo The release notes are linked to the documentation for the various new features. There will be more marketing material made before the new version actually releases in December.

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Ben Wilson ♦♦ David Seo commented · Nov 12, 2020 at 04:01 PM

I appreciate Visual Studio Code's release notes. Here is one example:

Visual Studio Code October 2020

They always have lots of images, animations, and links to fully demonstrate highlighted changes. I don't think every single little change or bugfix is highlighted in this way, but I've always been impressed at the depth they go to.

@Markus Cueva, if that is something worth pursuing, as dev team makes these changes and tests them seems the logical time to capture these animations, screenshots, and summaries - they're the ones that know exactly what changed, and how to demonstrate it - but if they don't think that is a good option, maybe it would be something that could be farmed out to the company via assignments on a Google sheet. But it does seem a little counter-intuitive to do it that way, since we'd have to go to dev team to find out exactly what changed and how to demonstrate it ;)

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Phil BoBo ♦♦ Ben Wilson ♦♦ commented · Nov 12, 2020 at 05:08 PM

The 21.0 release notes are linked to their documentation pages that show this type of detail. It's redundant to put it into the release notes themselves.

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SudheerReddy commented · Nov 07, 2020 at 07:36 AM

Why FlexSim has so many updates per year...Is there any justification for so many releases

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Clair A SudheerReddy commented · Nov 09, 2020 at 11:38 AM

Hello @SudheerReddy,

FlexSim releases 3 major updates per year:

the year release (example: 20.0)
Update 1 (example: 20.1)
Update 2 (example: 20.2)

Many customers are sending feature requests all year long. Some customers don't want to wait 1 year before the next year release to get new features. These users can be satisfied with the releases of Updates 1 and 2 during the year.

In parallel, for those who might not need the latest features, FlexSim maintains the year release for more than 1 year. The year release is called the Long-Term Support (LTS) version. If you prefer using the LTS, that means you only need to update once a year to get new features.

If you want to know more about the release schedule, I recommend this post:

https://answers.flexsim.com/articles/60173/flexsim-version-numbering.html

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Ben Wilson ♦♦ Clair A commented · Nov 09, 2020 at 11:44 PM

Bugfix releases are also produced regularly, both for the latest update, as well as the LTS release.

We always recommend using the latest bugfix release, in order to take advantage of the various fixes that may solve problems you could encounter. Keeping up to date with bugfixes will mean that you should download and install multiple times per year.

This is just the nature of software. It is always improving. You can always choose to remain on an older version, but to take advantage of the latest features and fixes, stay on the current release.

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Lars Jacobsen commented · Nov 10, 2020 at 08:05 AM

Removing conveyor types is a major problem. Will it be possible to retain them for this release, to give us time to phase them out? Will you phase out all kind of types ? Transfer Type is retained for now?

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Phil BoBo ♦♦ Lars Jacobsen commented · Nov 10, 2020 at 03:53 PM

What issues are you having with the removal of conveyor types? Do you have a particular model or situation that is not being updated properly?

What time do you need to "phase them out"? What are you planning on doing in order to "phase them out"?

Conveyor transfers that are created and deleted simply by dragging conveyors around have retained their Transfer Types in order to avoid losing that data. You can still use Transfer Types to configure these types of transfers so that if they are accidentally deleted by moving a conveyor, it is easy to set them back when you reconnect the conveyor.

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anthony.johnson ♦♦ Lars Jacobsen commented · Nov 10, 2020 at 05:11 PM

We removed conveyor types to bring consistency to FlexSim's object library. We do not have this type mechanism for other objects in the library (processor types?, rack types?, operator types?, transporter types?). Why should conveyors be different? The conveyor types were inconsistent with the general FlexSim design. That said, we do have visualization types for racks. This is what we've consolidated the conveyor types to now, namely shared visualization properties. We've realized that shared behavior properties bring with them just as many problems as benefits. For example, conveyor types prevent users from using the new property tables, and the new Object.setProperty() mechanism for defining behavior properties on a conveyor. Also, if you have a conveyor that is the same as other conveyors of its type in all aspects except one, you still have to create a new conveyor type. This defeats the purpose of the shared behavior of conveyor types. If I have 15 conveyors with 15 different max speeds, with all other conveyor type attributes being the same, I still have to create 15 different conveyor types.

By moving conveyor behavior properties to being owned directly by the conveyor instance, we are bringing more consistency, and hence learnability, in allowing users to define object properties. You can still view and edit the properties of large numbers of conveyors using property tables, or by selecting multiple conveyors and editing properties in the properties window. This is consistent with how you do it with other library objects. If a user learns this mechanism with processors, that user will automatically know how to do it with conveyors. For example, you can use groups to essentially replace conveyor types. Add the set of conveyors that were previously part of a conveyor type into an object group, then create one or more property tables that filters by that group. Adding/removing conveyors from that and other groups is automatically reflected in the property tables that are filtering by the group.

The transfer types will remain, specifically because conveyor transfers are so ephemeral. Simply moving a conveyor will delete and create new transfers, which would be very frustrating if the user just spent significant time defining the properties of the transfer that they subsequently deleted.

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Lars Jacobsen anthony.johnson ♦♦ commented · Nov 11, 2020 at 07:44 AM

The issue is that it takes some time to upgrade 2020.2.3 models, as they don't run in version 2021.0.0. It is not a problem for new models or small/simpel models. So I will get on with it.....

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Clair A commented · Nov 10, 2020 at 01:54 PM

What is approximately the expected date for the final 21.0 relase ?

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