What improvements would you like to see in Vensim?

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aliakhavan89
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Re: What improvements would you like to see in Vensim?

Post by aliakhavan89 »

Hi,

Hope this message finds you well. The image shows what one sees when the Dark Mode is enabled on macOS; totally uncomfortable. One possible solution would be to have a default color being inverted when the Dark Mode is enabled on the system.

Link to the image: [Link removed as website attempts to track and send notifications to visitors]
Vensim DSS Version 8.0.7

Best,
Ali
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Re: What improvements would you like to see in Vensim?

Post by Administrator »

aliakhavan89 wrote: Wed Dec 11, 2019 5:27 am Hi,

Hope this message finds you well. The image shows what one sees when the Dark Mode is enabled on macOS; totally uncomfortable. One possible solution would be to have a default color being inverted when the Dark Mode is enabled on the system.

Link to the image: [Link removed as website attempts to track and send notifications to visitors]
Vensim DSS Version 8.0.7

Best,
Ali
This has already been discussed,
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=7285&p=27843&hilit=dark#p27843
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aliakhavan89
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Re: What improvements would you like to see in Vensim?

Post by aliakhavan89 »

Thanks!

Can we have a separate/dedicated section to report bugs and provide feedback in this forum? Also, from your side, it would be useful to include a feedback button in the software's menu. Sometimes, users feel more relaxed to report issues directly to you and you definitely can gather the data more efficiently and systematically.
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Re: What improvements would you like to see in Vensim?

Post by Administrator »

aliakhavan89 wrote: Thu Dec 12, 2019 10:23 amCan we have a separate/dedicated section to report bugs and provide feedback in this forum?
You can post directly into the Vensim section. Sub-dividing the forum makes it harder to search.
aliakhavan89 wrote: Thu Dec 12, 2019 10:23 amAlso, from your side, it would be useful to include a feedback button in the software's menu. Sometimes, users feel more relaxed to report issues directly to you and you definitely can gather the data more efficiently and systematically.
Sadly we would be inundated with questions that have already been answered many times. The FAQ on the website lists the questions we are asked most often and even though we suggest that users look at the FAQ first, they rarely do.
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Paco_Z14000
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Re: What improvements would you like to see in Vensim?

Post by Paco_Z14000 »

i have some recommendations at the interface, some improvement of the organization in the model

we usually try to make it look organized, so if you please try to create an organizer it would be great, sometimes the arrows cross each other, and it makes look messy the model. maybe we cant find the way to avoid this kind of negative experience, it would become an incredible benefit to the user, please development this solution

this margins could even be customizable, you could decide if you want a certain variable to be in the center of the model
Paco_Z14000
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Re: What improvements would you like to see in Vensim?

Post by Paco_Z14000 »

I have some recommendations at the interface :oops: , some improvement of the organization in the model, basically make the model organize by itself

we usually try to make it look organized 8), so if you please try to create an organizer it would be great, sometimes the arrows cross each other, and it makes look messy the model. maybe we cant find the way to avoid this kind of negative experience, it would become an incredible benefit to the use and competitive advantage if the arrows find the way to not cross each other, but if they need to, try to be the least possible.

also to custom the order in the model and you don't care if they cross or not, it should let you choose where to put some variables (in causal cycle diagrams for example when you want a variable to be in the center of everything) (maximum of 5 maybe? at the corners and in the center in every case you want to order something? :roll: )

another improvement could be in the organization of the model will be making some margins, this could even be customizable too, let them have rules between sets of tanks and flows and the independent variables that would be connected whit, the distance between two sets (let me decide who are in the set too), try to make them look like a waterfall, that stuff.

This would help a lot to show a non-ingenier person how is the model because he won't be lost in that messy, an easier way to explain because is very elegant, a standardized model

:!: speaking of standardization, the model should let you change all the tanks to the same size and the large of the flows, I mean, if I want to I probably go to a margins panels of control and change every size at the same time, or make all fit with their tex inside, let me change the large of the flows between tanks or between a tank and a cloud into an only one.

a screenshot section that could generate an image of your model into a png (the weight will depend on the size of your model, in that way you just paste it in your inform.

and last but not least, a page where every object (Tank, variable, flow, etc) is in a list (this list should be something like the image of the type of object, type of object, name of the object (you know, is a tank, but its name is inmigrants or something like that) and the commentary), this would be very important because we could put some notes next to it, to specify why is that there, and control in some way what we have in the model, also a searcher of some object will be very appreciated :?: in this, you search and the screen is moved to put the searched object in the center.

This is some of my recommendations to improve the experience of the user in this program, I hope this will be implemented, is really important to make the user very comfortable

*post data: the Ventana software support forum should let me link two mails whit the same account because this email is from the university and i want to link it whit my personal mail.
EwoutH
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Re: What improvements would you like to see in Vensim?

Post by EwoutH »

I would love to see proper high-dpi support for Vensim. Currently it's a blurry mess by default when display scaling is set to any value higher than 100%, and after a lot of manual tuning you get a kind-of-usable experience with still some UI elements badly aligned.

I believe updating the build systems could go a long way. If Visual Studio is used, updating to Visual Studio 2019 (version 16) could help a lot. Otherwise there is the excellent guide from Microsoft:
jpain3
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Re: What improvements would you like to see in Vensim?

Post by jpain3 »

Hi!

I would love to see more keyboard shortcuts for layout and sketching (or perhaps the ability to define my own?) beyond what is shown here https://www.vensim.com/documentation/shortcuts.htm

Specifically, I'd love to be able to have more intuitive keyboard shortcuts for everything in the Layout menu (for rapid arranging and visual cleaning of diagrams). For example, rather than pressing Alt+L+H to align objects to the same height, maybe being able to press Alt+Shift+Up.

Also, and perhaps most time saving for me and supporting ease of good diagramming practice, I'd love to have a keyboard shortcut for assigning polarity to Arrows while drawing them. For example, maybe pressing 'shift' or '+' while completing an arrow adds a + to it, while pressing 'alt' or '-' adds a - to it. As an extension of this, being able to assign a polarity to existing arrows en masse would be helpful as well (maybe selecting one or many arrows and pressing Shift+'+' to place a + symbol on all of them at once for example).

A good chunk of my time is spent between rapid drawing and then going back and cleaning it all up. I would love to be able to do more of that cleaning while I'm actively making the diagram.

Thank you developers for all the work you do on this software!
tomfid
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Re: What improvements would you like to see in Vensim?

Post by tomfid »

@EwoutH a new graphics system is in internal testing already, so this should be improved soon. @jpain3 - good ideas.
EwoutH
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Re: What improvements would you like to see in Vensim?

Post by EwoutH »

tomfid wrote: Sat May 09, 2020 9:24 pm @EwoutH a new graphics system is in internal testing already, so this should be improved soon.
Great to hear! Is there a release date that is targeted?
rosenm
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Re: What improvements would you like to see in Vensim?

Post by rosenm »

Any chance to enrich the options for the lines in the graph - thickness, color, pattern, font and size for axes?
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Re: What improvements would you like to see in Vensim?

Post by Administrator »

rosenm wrote: Thu Nov 26, 2020 8:09 pm Any chance to enrich the options for the lines in the graph - thickness, color, pattern, font and size for axes?
You can change fonts for graphs and get thick lines.
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Dr John P Weldon
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How best to respond to changes in Vensim

Post by Dr John P Weldon »

Some changes to Vensim are disruptive and extensive. 'COMPREAL' is the most-recent example.

Currently, users are provided with a template project, and are then expected to rebuild their own projects from scratch.

There are various circumstances and reasons why this approach is undesirable and even self-defeating. I propose that the process should be fully automated, using a wizard or something similar. The wizard would ask the user to input information about project parameters. The wizard would then rebuild user projects from go to whoa. This process could be made optional. Some users may wish to rebuild from the template project.

I would utilise the wizard. The prospect of rebuilding ten large projects from scratch is distinctly unwelcome. It is also a matter of specific knowledge. Not all Vensim users are both professional programmers and Vensim specialists. Many are the equivalent of the vehicle driver who is not a mechanical or electronic engineer. For these users errors and time-wasting in rebuilding are a matter of when not if; especially if a user lacks adequate access to the above 'specific knowledge'.

Then there is the case where a user's focus is on developing models (supported by C/C++ subprograms) for licensing to many end-users. In this case the model is 'generic'. It represents a system type (eg a hotel). Those end users will not be well placed to rebuild Vensim projects from scratch. The situation would likely get messy and 'self-defeating'.

Generic models could (should) be a significant part of Vensim's commercial future. That will depend on whether the appropriate decisions are made for Vensim. That, in turn, will depend on attitudes and vision.

Returning to the COMPREAL example, I was intrigued to find that no other user joined the debate in the forum, under the title 'COMPREAL v REAL and float'.
Dr John P Weldon
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Re: What improvements would you like to see in Vensim?

Post by Dr John P Weldon »

Some changes to Vensim are disruptive and extensive. 'COMPREAL' is the most-recent example.

Currently, users are provided with a template project, and are then expected to rebuild their own projects from scratch.

There are various circumstances and reasons why this approach is undesirable and even self-defeating. I propose that the process should be fully automated, using a wizard or something similar. The wizard would ask the user to input information about project parameters. The wizard would then rebuild user projects from go to whoa. This process could be made optional. Some users may wish to rebuild from the template project.

I would utilise the wizard. The prospect of rebuilding ten large projects from scratch is distinctly unwelcome. It is also a matter of specific knowledge. Not all Vensim users are both professional programmers and Vensim specialists. Many are the equivalent of the vehicle driver who is not a mechanical or electronic engineer. For these users errors and time-wasting in rebuilding are a matter of when not if; especially if a user lacks adequate access to the above 'specific knowledge'.

Then there is the case where a user's focus is on developing models (supported by C/C++ subprograms) for licensing to many end-users. In this case the model is 'generic'. It represents a system type (eg a hotel). Those end users will not be well placed to rebuild Vensim projects from scratch. The situation would likely get messy and 'self-defeating'.

Generic models could (should) be a significant part of Vensim's commercial future. That will depend on whether the appropriate decisions are made for Vensim. That, in turn, will depend on attitudes and vision.

Returning to the COMPREAL example, I was intrigued to find that no other user joined the debate in the forum, under the title 'COMPREAL v REAL and float.
Travis
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Better integration with non-Vensim tools

Post by Travis »

Picking up on something JohnPW said: I would like to see Vensim situate itself as part of a toolset more. John talked about generic models.

Improving workflows of a modern modeler: I envision Vensim fitting in more deeply with many other tools are commonly being used in other modeling, programming and analytic disciplines. I remember back to my dissertation days when I would need to regenerate many graphs after a simple model change. I had scripts do this so my LaTeX document could automatically include them. Today there are lots of tools that I use before/after Vensim, but I think could easily be included and made useful for all Vensim users.

Some examples:

* Working better with Git and version control (already improving!)
* Allowing scripting for beautiful graph generation in a PDF/SVG/vector format
* Output documentation to Markdown (useful for web support and papers)
* Stronger build/run system that would allow for scripts to be run before and after a simulation
* Integrated validity testing to allow for continuous integration and quality control (ie., more useful version of Reality Checks like modern programming environments can do for code)
* Integration with Python (subsume PySD and build native support)

If some of the above is doable already, my apologies. If a CMD script can do it, then maybe the effort needs to be in creating a useful UI around it to make it approachable for more users.

Climate Interactive is continuing to build out most of the above for our use, and open sourcing features like SDEverywhere.org when they are ready. Overall it might be better for Vensim to have some/most of these features built-in to make them easier for everyone to use.

@everyone: What tools and workflows do you use before and after working in Vensim?
jpain3
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Re: What improvements would you like to see in Vensim?

Post by jpain3 »

I would like to be able to generate reports or exports that give something like an adjacency matrix of variables in a model, or equivalently some sort of report around the connections in a diagram or model.

I've been making something like this on my own using the .xmile export from Vensim with some success, but I think something built-in would be much cleaner. I'm assuming that variable input/output mapping is already in Vensim itself (to generate things like the causes and uses tree diagrams). The xmile output uses the actual variable names instead of something like a numerical variable ID, which makes it easy to read as a human, but sometimes tricky to digest in my shoddy side code!

I also would not be surprised if this sort of reporting is already in Vensim and I just haven't found it yet, so my apologies if that's the case!
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Re: What improvements would you like to see in Vensim?

Post by Administrator »

jpain3 wrote: Mon Mar 01, 2021 3:31 pm I would like to be able to generate reports or exports that give something like an adjacency matrix of variables in a model, or equivalently some sort of report around the connections in a diagram or model.

I've been making something like this on my own using the .xmile export from Vensim with some success, but I think something built-in would be much cleaner. I'm assuming that variable input/output mapping is already in Vensim itself (to generate things like the causes and uses tree diagrams). The xmile output uses the actual variable names instead of something like a numerical variable ID, which makes it easy to read as a human, but sometimes tricky to digest in my shoddy side code!

I also would not be surprised if this sort of reporting is already in Vensim and I just haven't found it yet, so my apologies if that's the case!
It could well already be in Vensim (the document tool).
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Mehd.Asali
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Re: What improvements would you like to see in Vensim?

Post by Mehd.Asali »

I would like to see constraint optimization (of parts of models) is made possible and easily applicable in SD models.
EwoutH
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Re: What improvements would you like to see in Vensim?

Post by EwoutH »

Exporting a current/full model view as vector image (SVG) would be awesome. Some other options like PNG or PDF would also be useful, but SVG is for me the most important.

In addition, some options to hide certain elements on image export (like shadow variables) would be useful as well.

I know there is already a Print option, which you can use to save as PDF, which you can potentially convert to SVG, but that's quite cumbersome for digital publishing.
EwoutH
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Re: What improvements would you like to see in Vensim?

Post by EwoutH »

Oh very small nit-pick, could the cloud be included in vector format?

Screenshot_448.png
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Re: What improvements would you like to see in Vensim?

Post by Administrator »

We are currently coming towards the end of a complete re-write of the user interface. Once this is complete, we should be able to implement SVG without any problems.
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syseng
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Vensim on Linux! Even in a docker. Wine64 works.

Post by syseng »

I use EDA tools for hardware design and IDE for programming, Jupyter-notebook for ML. I design web applications UX

A simple thing like a popup menu on right mouse, where you can see status and navigate to the area of desire.

with creating table, it is easier for me to do it in the text editor than graphically.

There is no machine Learning object, I did not see one.

I can not use Windows! I am running VensimDSS in Wine64.
It must run on Linux! It could be in a docker, but Linux has to be supported.
EwoutH
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Re: What improvements would you like to see in Vensim?

Post by EwoutH »

It would be great if it was possible to export / save Vensim models in the Visio file format (.vsdx).

See:
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Re: What improvements would you like to see in Vensim?

Post by Administrator »

EwoutH wrote: Thu Feb 10, 2022 9:46 am It would be great if it was possible to export / save Vensim models in the Visio file format (.vsdx).

See:
I don't recall anyone ever asking for this before.

We already export in SVG format which is supported by a much larger range of programs. It might be better to see if SVG can be imported into Visio.
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EwoutH
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Re: What improvements would you like to see in Vensim?

Post by EwoutH »

To give some context, we're using Vensim at the Delft University of Technology. In a conceptual stage, we also use it to create conceptual models like CLDs and stock-flow diagrams. It's often preferred to modify those diagrams using other software before including in a report or documentation.

A big advantage of building conceptual models in Vensim is having a basis for an operational model already and getting accustomed with the software in the progress.

I just tested what can be done with the SVG. It's possible to open it in PowerPoint, ungroup it and then modifying its individual elements. Unfortunately, the web version of Visio doesn't support importing or opening SVGs by default. Which is mainly a limitation by Visio itself.

So SVGs work most of the time, and I don't know the effort of implementing such a feature as saving in VSDX format, but it would be a nice quality of life improvement alongside SVG, at least for us.
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