Conduct Trial
A trial (or experiment) is a series of runs of the simulation, performed with the same settings for all parameters other than “random numbers”.
Number of Runs
This lets you tell Simul8 how many runs to do in your trial. The more runs you do the more accurate your results will be, but obviously it will take longer. There is no fixed rule about how many runs you should do, it varies depending on lots of factors in your simulation. Use the Trial Calculator to have Simul8 work out the right number for you.
Base Random Number
The base random number stream can be changed if you want to make two trials, but use different random numbers for the two trials (This is not normally necessary). The actual random number stream sets used for the first run in the trial is the base set, this is incremented for each run in the trial.
Extend
The EXTEND button allows an already completed Trial to be extended to a new number of runs to increase accuracy (narrow confidence limits) without the need to re-run the previously executed runs.
Name
Set the name of the trial, this will be displayed in the KPI Summary window and is useful for documenting your results.
Antithetic
Select this to reverse all the random numbers. (At a low level, before random numbers are used in distributions, they are all in the range 0.00000 to 1.00000. Antithetic random numbers are exactly the same streams of numbers except they range from 1.00000 to 0.00000). Changing to the antithetic of a set of random numbers is a quick way to see if the random numbers are having a large impact on the result of a simulation.