INOSIM 13 Released – What's new?

After intense development work and comprehensive testing, the new version of our process simulation software, INOSIM 13, has finally been released. INOSIM 13 lays the foundations for future developments by implementing up-to-date technologies (i.e., the extension interface used to develop the BICON-Add-on and .NET-support). Additionally, INOSIM 13 provides an extensive list of small and large improvements, many of which were inspired by the close contact with our users.

Download INOSIM 13

Innovative features and spot-on improvements

Many improvements to existing features as well as completely new features have been implemented into the new version of the INOSIM process simulation software. Read on to learn about the most relevant changes. A full list of changes in INOSIM 13 is available for download as release notes.

New Gantt Chart Features

INOSIM’s Gantt chart is a popular and very helpful way to display simulation results. For INOSIM 13 it was extended with many helpful features.

More Options to Color Allocation Bars

Waiting times can be hidden, displayed as usual, or like their respective operations.
The production stage (Clean, Set-up, Normal) can be used to color allocation bars.
The properties window displays the description of units, resources and custom bar rows.

Easier Setup of Custom Views with additional filters

In the setup of custom views, simply filter for the classic “allocation and mass”, or search for a substring to quickly find the elements to display. For example, search for “Filt” to find “Filter 1”, “Filtration” and “Filter Press”.

Hiding Inactive Elements

It is now possible to hide inactive elements. INOSIM Gantt will hide allocation bars of unused units and graphs that only show the value 0.

Extended Reporting Features

Besides the Gantt chart, all simulation results are available as Excel reports, and as Reporting Object in VBA for further analysis and custom reports. The reports have been extended with several features, for example:

The Unit Utilization report now includes the first & last allocation date of a unit (FirstAllocationDate and LastAllocationDate property).
The Unit Utilization report also includes the time a unit has been allocated per production stage (Clean, Set-Up, Normal) (StageTime property).
The values stored in Custom Curves can now be accessed via the reporting object in VBA and as Excel report.

Improved Usability and General Changes

The recipe editor and many dialogs were improved for better user experience. In all dialogs, Custom Attributes can now be edited in-line instead of in a separate window. A circled “M” indicates that a module parameter control is assigned to a recipe module (like a “P” for parameter control, etc.), and a circled “L” indicates that a line mapping has been assigned to a unit procedure.

Settings like the selected project in a database or the selected experiment within a project are not user-specific anymore. Therefore, settings are passed on when exporting a project.

Simulation

In version 12 (and before), only one continuous transfer could be active in one unit. With INOSIM 13, an arbitrary number of parallel continuous transfers (group of flux operation plus startTransfer operation) can be active at the same time within a single unit.

Furthermore, all operations can now allocate resources, including noOperation operations.

Documentation

The documentation, available as PDF for download and from within the software as online help, has received some thorough review and was extended to provide more relevant information.

Updated Basic-Editor

INOSIM’s VBA-programming interface now comes with new features like .NET support, macro synchronization, updated unit pool controls, and many others, to grant users unprecedented control over simulation dynamics.

.NET support for INOSIM 13

In addition to the existing WWB-COM language variant, INOSIM 13 now supports WWB.NET and uses it as standard language. All VBA code examples in the documentation were converted from WWB-COM to WWB.NET.

Macro synchronization and password protection

Macros can now be linked to external files. Such file links can be push- or pull-synchronized to either overwrite the external files or the macro in the INOSIM project. This feature can be used to track changes of your VBA code with common source code management tools. Additionally, macros can be password-protected to prevent unwanted or accidental changes.

Pool Allocation and Transfer-to/from-UnitPool Controls

Unit Pool Allocation controls are used to decide which member (unit) of a unit pool shall be allocated with a unit procedure. In INOSIM 13 the functionality of this control has been substantially extended. Additionally, the Transfer to/from UnitPool control has been improved. Learn more about how to make use of the new features and check out extensive examples in our latest tip and trick.

Operation Parameters and Additional Properties

In INOSIM 13, practically all operation parameters can be changed during the operation’s parameterization event and before. For instance, it is now possible to change the SourceSinkUnits property even from a preceding event. Additionally, operations’ waiting status and waiting times are accessible in VBA.

Changing operation types dynamically

It is now possible to change the operation type during the parameterization event in VBA. This feature allows to build recipes very generically and changing the operation type dynamically.

More Properties for Units

In INOSIM 13, unit objects return a list of those UnitPools that they are member of with the UnitPools property. Moreover, it is possible to disable units via VBA by setting their Disabled property to true during the simulation initialization. The Description property is now available for read and write not only for units, but for most objects, e.g., Orders, Projects, Resources, and more.

Update Now

INOSIM 13 is a separate installation and can co-exist with INOSIM 12 on your computer. All INOSIM 12 projects and databases are compatible with INOSIM 13. Your co-workers are still working with INOSIM 12? No worries, projects and databases created with INOSIM 13 are compatible with INOSIM 12, too.