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Claire Krupp avatar image
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Claire Krupp asked Braydn T commented

Best way to model people and material flow on multiple floors?

I need to model the traffic flow of the whole plant at a high level, where "loads" arrive and need to be transported (by vehicle or operator), and there are also people moving to and from breaks, lunch, end of shift etc.

The production areas are on two floors, with elevators and stairs linking them. It is a large plant and could have 2000+ people and TEs moving at the same time.

I would like to use AStar navigation but I have read on this site that it is difficult to use it for multiple floors. Maybe I could create a layout drawing that shows both floors side by side? But then how do I deal with linking the elevators and stairs so that the people and vehicles can "jump" from one part of the drawing to the other floor?

Thanks for any suggestions.

FlexSim 19.0.0
network nodesastar navigatorpeople flowtraffic
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Joe Hugan avatar image Joe Hugan commented ·

@Claire K Did you build the model mentioned here? I have a similar requirement. I'm wondering how the software handled the number of active entities you were modeling. Thanks!

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Claire Krupp avatar image Claire Krupp Joe Hugan commented ·

Hi @Joe Hugan ! Yes I did. It did slow down a lot with all the People active, but not so badly that it was not possible to run experiments. There were some graphics issues with the heat map display that sometimes required a restart, but overall I was happy with the performance.

The main issue that took time to debug was the need for a large number (60+) of Preferred Pathways to make the People walk in "intelligent" ways around corners and in bottleneck areas.

I would be happy to show the model to you if you would like.

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Joe Hugan avatar image Joe Hugan commented ·
@Claire K

I may have a project where it is relevant. I'll reach out for a more detailed discussion once I know if I am going to be modeling it. thanks!

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Yen T3 avatar image Yen T3 commented ·

Hi Claire, I'm currently looking for a solution for my project with similar requirement. I'm wondering how the software can help to model the traffic flow of the whole plant, and people flow within the plant. Thank you.

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Braydn T avatar image Braydn T Yen T3 commented ·

@Yen T3 Please follow our Best Practices and post this in a new question. Thank you!

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1 Answer

Matthew Gillespie avatar image
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Matthew Gillespie answered Matthew Gillespie commented

Yes, if you put the floors next to each other you can use A* as the navigation system. You can use an A* bridge object to handle the points where people move from one drawing to another. This answer shows a simple example of how to do that.

We are currently working on improvements to A* that will allow you to create multiple grids and put the grids at different heights. We're also working on an elevator object that will move people between grids. We're hoping to have these new features done for the 19.1 release around April.

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Claire Krupp avatar image Claire Krupp commented ·

Thank you, I will try that.

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christoph gruber avatar image christoph gruber commented ·

Hi @Matthew Gillespie I´m looking for a good solution for my actual project. I have to simulate a 7 floor building with different stairways. The question is, if there is an fire alarm how long does it takes if all people out of the building? My question is, what is the best way to join the different floors together. First with your little example model above or second with different grids you are mentioned (I´m working with V19.1.2). And when with different grids, how can I link the grids with stairs together (I don´t find a describing in the User Manual or Tutorial!?).Maybe there exist a little example model you can show me? Thank you very much in advance.

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Matthew Gillespie avatar image Matthew Gillespie ♦♦ christoph gruber commented ·

You still uses bridges or elevators (which are bridges) with a start point in one grid and the end point in another grid. Here's a little 2 floor stair example.

connectinggrids.fsm

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connectinggrids.fsm (30.8 KiB)