Other Suggestions for Organizing Your Model

In addition to structuring your model in a top-down manner, the following suggestions can also help you to create well-organized and easy to understand models:

• Name the elements of your model carefully. If possible, avoid using abbreviations that will not be easily recognized by others.

• Use the Description field for all of your elements. Because the Description is displayed in tool-tips, it can be an effective and highly visible documentation tool.

• Don’t hide the details of your model within long input expressions. It is better to add a few additional elements such that the relationships in the model can be shown graphically and are transparent.

• Filter influences in your model if they detract from the presentation. It is often particularly useful to filter influences at the highest model level (to make the diagrams easier to view).

• Modify the color of influences to highlight key relationships.

• In some cases, it may be worthwhile to place similar items in a single Container (even if they are referenced throughout the model). For example, you may want to place all constant inputs in one Container named "Constants" or "Key_Assumptions". If it is important that some of these elements also appear in the Container in which they are referenced (in order to add clarity), you could place a clone of the element in that Container.

• It is often useful to create a "Results" Container in the model Root (or perhaps one containment level down) with Result elements for all of the model's key outputs. This allows you to quickly access and display the model's results.

• You can use the Hyperlink object to provide navigation aids for your model. The Hyperlink object can be used to provide links “jumps” to specified Containers, Dashboards or elements from any location.