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Lilian Fonseca avatar image
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Lilian Fonseca asked Matthew Gillespie edited

Conveyor routing based off flowitem characteristics?

My production line needs to work in a way that if the flowitem beam is longer or equal than 80 inches, it turns to the left, otherwise it goes straight ahead. I have been trying to use decision points,

but it just doesn't work. I have tried to use the function "xsize(current)", on the OnArrival trigger in the first decision point. I have attached a figure illustrating what I have been doing.

Thanks.

FlexSim 16.0.1
conveyorflowitemdecision pointsroutingsend to
conveyorissue.png (64.3 KiB)
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1 Answer

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Matthew Gillespie answered Lilian Fonseca commented

You need to use xsize(item) and not xsize(current).

In the decision point triggers:

current is the decision point

item is the flowitem

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Lilian Fonseca avatar image Lilian Fonseca commented ·

@Matthew Gillespie

I have just corrected what you said, but it is still running incorrectly. Would you mind to check my model file? It is attached to this comment.

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automation.fsm (5.3 MiB)
Matthew Gillespie avatar image Matthew Gillespie ♦♦ Lilian Fonseca commented ·

There are at least 3 more problems with this model that I can see:

  1. You need to send to outobject(current, 1) and not outobject(item, 1). You want to the item to the 1st decision point connected to the current decision point.
  2. Your case function is xsize(item)<=60 which will only return a 0 or a 1 (true or false). So your cases need to be 0 and 1 and not 1 and 2.
  3. All of your boxes are 1x1x1 cubes, but you're looking for boxes less than or equal to 60, so they're all less than 60.

Attached is a model where I have a simple example conveyor system doing what you're trying to do.

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sendbywidth.fsm (18.9 KiB)
Lilian Fonseca avatar image Lilian Fonseca Matthew Gillespie ♦♦ commented ·

I am trying to apply in my model the same logic you used in your example. However, it still doesn't work. About my boxes, there is a dashboard attached to three global variables that will determine the dimensions of the flowitem following a trigger set up on creation on each source, so before the simulation runs the user is able to decide for the size of the product that will come from the source. I think the problem is due the queue that is placed between the first and the following decision points, but I still didn't figure out what the problem might be.

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