Conveyors
Conveyors are a means of transporting Work Items around the system you are simulating.
Create a conveyor from the Advanced Building Blocks tab on the Simulation Drawing Tool Panel.
Conveyors can be used in ways similar to Activities but they also have similarities to Queues.
Conveyors can be displayed as standard icons, file based icons/bitmaps or as animations showing the location of each Work Item on the Conveyor. They are animated in the same way as Queues except that in moving the animated display with the mouse the two handles on the screen represent the front (destination) and end (source) of the Conveyor, rather than the first and second items in the queue.
The number of Work Items that can be on a Conveyor at any one time is determined by the length of the Conveyor and the size of the Work Item. The size or length of a Work Item can be controlled by using the reserved Label name Length.
The speed of a Conveyor, combined with its length affects how long it takes a Work Item to travel from the start to the end of a Conveyor (assuming no other Work Items block its progress).
Conveyors can be either “Accumulating” or “Fixed”. If Accumulating is unchecked, the first Work Item on the Conveyor stops (because it has reached the front of the Conveyor) then all other Work Items on the Conveyor will also stop. (Gaps on the Conveyor do not get squashed to let the items accumulate at the front).
When Ticked the Allow Gaps check box allows the Conveyor to continue to run when there are no items waiting to be loaded.
When unticked the Allow Gaps check box commands the Conveyor to wait whenever a gap will appear on the Conveyor if an item is not ready to be immediately loaded.
Conveyors can also be set to a Power and Free / Fixed Pitch mode. These conveyor types allow for the inclusion of fixed-spaced hooks that can attach to work items at various points along the work item’s length.
When ticked, the Fixed Pitch check box will enable the Power and Free features. Use the Dog Pitch field to enter the distance between the dog hooks.
A Conveyor actively pushes work that reaches its end onto the next available simulation object. Use the Routing Out option in the Conveyor dialog to affect how the Conveyor decides where to send Work Items.
See Also
Using Conveyors?
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