Creating and Using Result Elements

While the interactive result display procedure (in which you right-click on an element or an output and select a result display option from a context menu) is appropriate in many cases, it has several limitations:

• It requires several steps to actually view the result (expand an element's outputs, right-click on an output, select display options).

• The outputs you want to display may be scattered across various portions of your model, forcing you to navigate through the model to find and display the results.

• The result display is modal, meaning you can only view one display at a time.

To address these limitations, GoldSim allows you to create Result elements. A Result element is a specialized element representing a particular result display. As such, there are five types of basic Result elements: Time History, Distribution, Final Value, Multi-Variate, and Array. When you double-click on a Result element, the result is directly displayed:

Result elements have several important advantages:

• They allow you to access results via a simple double-click.

• They allow you to make key results readily accessible by placing them in one or more convenient locations (e.g., in a single "results" Container) to facilitate presentations and use of the model by others.

• All the result characteristics are saved with the Result element, so that you can completely control and customize how the result will be displayed when it is subsequently viewed (e.g., in a presentation or by another user). Once you display the result, the last size and position of the result display is also saved with the Result element.

• Result elements can be opened prior to the start of a simulation, and are updated dynamically as the simulation progresses (e.g., as each realization is completed).

• The display windows for Result elements are modeless, meaning that you can view multiple display windows simultaneously.

In addition, in some cases, Result elements have special capabilities that do not exist for the corresponding interactive result.

The topics below discuss the use of Result elements in detail.