Ventana software support forum

What is the different between Stella , Vensim and Powersim ,
Is there is any journals which can help?

Hi Almoon

There are some differences between these softwares, but what makes the real difference is the ability of the modeler.
Vensim has two obvious advantages. It has a free version Vensim PLE for learning purposes and a forum where you can post questions and generally get answers.
Regards.
JJ

Thank u for ur reply ,
But i still need more information if u can help

It is difficult to get into technical considerations. What are you trying to do?
I know a little Powersim that I have tested some years ago and not I think.
Powersim can accumulate discreet flows although there are some ways to manage
that in Vensim too although it makes the model time step dependant. Powersim accepts too integer variables that makes modelling discreet problems easier.
Vensim has reality checks that help make models more credible as long as it is well mastered and used. The latest major 5.0 Vensim release is from the beginning of 2002 and I imagine that the next 6.0 release may have major new interesting features. But Bob Eberlein and the administrators must know that better than me.
Regards.
JJ

[Edited on 7-5-2008 by LAUJJL]

Thank u very much ,
Dear , I just started my PhD and my supervisor wants me to make a comparison between the tools and choose one ,i tried to find some resources but it was not easy ;(
regards

One of the advantage of Vensim is that it is the language used by the SD bible, Business Dynamics from John Sterman. That book seems to be very appreciated by the SD community and may be suitable for you from an academical point of view.
Regards.
JJ

Thank you very much

Hi

I have work with Vensim and iThink (Stella). I find quite more easy to work with Vensim manly because of the GUI capabilities (Colors, types of lines, etc.), I also like the reality check because it helps a lot to follow de model and to find mistakes. But I think Stella(iThink) is a more robust and versatile platform.

I have see the Powersim demo and the usability curve is really hard to follow been worked with vensim.

regards.

Hey, i first used powersim when i started modelling. I used powersim constructor first, then upgraded to powersim Studio. Although the GUI for powersim studion is great, there are some things that i did not like about it, and i prefered the constructor. I therefore ended up going for Vensim software. I am now getting interested in the spatial system dynamics, though new to it. I have been doing some reading, and i realise that, Vensim does not have the capability to implicitly or explicitly incorporate spatial dimensions. can you please clarify whether the new version 5.9 can take account of the spatial dimension? I am really keen.

Hello, I have one little question and hope someone will can help me So I wanna to ask about Powersim Constructor. Maybe someone knows or this program fits for Queuing Analysis, and you can find there some stuffs like average customer's waiting time, average number of customers in the system and etc. Or you just can show how changes queue in the different time unit and you can't analysis it, so how is?

Originally posted by almoon
What is the different between Stella , Vensim and Powersim ,
Is there is any journals which can help?

hi
i want to know : do you find any thing about different between Stella , Vensim and Powersim?
could you send me them?
ilia_mahan@yahoo.com
please soon

I think the first question is, what are you trying to do? Different tools may be more or less appropriate for certain tasks.

What are you modeling?
What questions are you trying to answer?
What's the time horizon of the model?
What level of detail is desired?
Who will make decisions based on the information you generate?
How will users interact with the model?
What kind of resources (time, $, data) do you have for the modeling project?

Tom

Hi,

I was using Vensim for development a system including a groundwater transport module in one dimension (x). Now I am going to develop a similar system but in 3d (x, y, z). Is powersim better for such spatial systems?

Thanks,

ismet

If you are already familiar with Vensim, why not just use it?

I'm not sure anyone here will be able to answer your question about Powersim (we are all Vensim users).

Administrator wrote:If you are already familiar with Vensim, why not just use it?

I'm not sure anyone here will be able to answer your question about Powersim (we are all Vensim users).

So then this whole topic could be removed

Not really. Some people still ask (and this topic is here so that at least there is some information available if it's needed).

I've built an air combat simulation with aircraft and missiles flying in three dimensions, using Vensim, so it should be no problem The use of external functions to simplify some equations helped, like distance between 2 objects in 3D space, once you have the equations, capture it as an external function and everything becomes so much easier IMO

Hi All,
I wrote a paper about that I will share it with you soon

You may find some answer from this link:
http://public.wsu.edu/~forda/Stella%20o ... 202010.pdf
and Chapter 2 of Ford's Modeling the Environment.

I've been working with Vensim, Stella professional, Stella 10.1, AnyLogic university edition. I would definitely recommend you to go with Vensim, primarily because of the software interface that makes modeling easy to understand with analysis tools. in addition to this, the support that you get from the Vensim forum is absolutely incredible.

Moreover, Vensim supports many more built-in functions that the others platforms don't support them or you will find that it is very difficult to implement these functions in other simulation platforms, such as allocation functions.