Entities

Anything that a model processes is called an "Entity." Documents, people, or phone calls should be modeled as entities. Entities may be grouped, such as when several boxes are stacked on a pallet (through the GROUP statement); consolidated into a single entity, such as when two or more documents are joined together (through the JOIN statement); split into two or more entities, such as when a box is opened and the contents removed (through the SPLIT AS statement); or converted to one or more new entities (through the RENAME or CREATE statement or by defining multiple outputs in the routing).

Each entity type has a name and a name index number. In logic and expressions, an entity can be referred to by name or by its name-index number using the ENT() function. The ENT() function allows a statement requiring an entity name to use an expression that may change to reference different entity names as a simulation progresses. See Ent() for more information.

Entities may also have user-assigned attributes to represent such things as dimensions, weights, pass/fail status, and group identifiers.

How to access the entities editor:

• Select Entities from the Build menu.

or...

• Right click on the existing entity and select Edit.