5.9 Changes

Pro/DSS Only: An option to display the time axis on graphs and time in the Table tool as Dates instead of decimal values has been added. This makes it easier to present things in a format that your audience may be more comfortable with. The settings for this are on the Time Bounds tab of the Model Settings dialog and their display is toggled on and off in the Time Axis tab or the Control Panels. Details on the settings are in Chapter 3 of the Reference Manual.

Pro/DSS Only: An additional ordering option "Comp" has been added to the Document tool. This will, to the extent possible, output the equations in computational order.

DSS Only: Note that the version number for external functions and compiled simulations has changed again. You will need to recompile your external functions with the new vensim.h file - no other changes are required relative to 5.8c versions. The x-axis scaling on the Lookup Editor has been changed to be tighter around the first and last value.

Pro/DSS Only: An alternate vector search technique SVECTOR has been added to the optimizer. This allows search over an arbitrary vector in the parameter space. See Chapter 10 of the Reference Manual for more details.

Pro/DSS only. Subscript error checking on self looping functions, including ALLOCATE AVAILABLE has been improved.

Bug Fixes

Setting TIME SLOP to NA could cause problems with importing data.

Pro/DSS Only: Using Lookup variables as if they were normal variables inside of a SUM function was not always generating an error message. Opening files with 4 letter extensions would not always work.

DSS Only: The IFTHENELSE command in Venapps was not working correctly. DSS Only sketch displays in Venapps would sometimes remain blank, graphs fail to populate and SyntheSim effects fail to display.

DSS Only: Compiling models using the VECTOR SELECT function was not working. Graphs created automatically during Reality Check simulations would not always display, and sometimes would show invalid results.

Importing data from spreadsheet files containing variables with special characters requiring quotes was not always working consistently.

Importing data from text files with time running down and values missing in the final columns would sometimes ignore data values after a gap in the data.

DSS Only: Commands where some elements required quotes, most notably SIMULATE>SETVAL with a special variable name, were not being parsed correctly.

On models with embedded sliders or graphs sometimes clicking OK on the Model>Settings dialog would cause Vensim to hang for a period of time and not refresh the sketch.