insert picture into Aux / Stock variable?

[kleemax]

Is there a way to insert a picture into auxilliary and/or stock variables?
I know it should be possible for comment fields. But I would need it for variables as well.
E.g. if I have a stock of cars, I would like to use some picture that shows cars.
If this is possible it would also be nice to know which picture formats are supported (only raster such as jpg, or also vector formats such as SVG, Windows-enhanced Metafile, pdf, PICT,...,) and whether this differs between Mac and Windows versions of Vensim

[tomfid]

It's not currently possible, but I agree that it would be nice. I'll ticket the feature request.

[kleemax]

any news on this?

[Administrator]

any news on this?

No, not yet.

[aliakhavan89]

I'm not sure how it would look like on other machines, but on macOS, you can use emojis instead of regular characters.

Screenshot 2025-04-02 at 1.26.28 PM.png (677.73 KiB) Viewed 1032 times

Screenshot 2025-04-02 at 1.27.57 PM.png (1.07 MiB) Viewed 1032 times

[tomfid]

Funny. I think there's probably a font that would make those unicode chars cross-platform, but it wasn't obvious which one. The model runs though.

[aliakhavan89]

Yes, they also show up in the equations.

Screenshot 2025-04-02 at 2.28.56 PM.png (1.77 MiB) Viewed 1024 times

[akuptel]

This reply just made my day, thank you

[kleemax]

This is a workaround that may sometimes help. However, inserting real pictures would be more helpful:
a) use icons not just fonts
b) combine qualitative Group Model Building with the advantages of Graphical Recording. You could have one person modeling in vensim and a graphical recorder drawing in a tablet and then insert these into Vensim. Sooner or later some SWs used for GMB will have such a feature.

I haven't checked, but some of the web-based tools commonly used for collaborative online GMB may already allow for this today.