Guided tour Arena
A GUIDED TOUR THROUGH ARENA
53
CHAPTER 3
A Guided Tour Through Arena
As we were honest enough to admit in Chapter 2, we really used Arena to carry out the
“hand” simulation in Section 2.4, as well as the multiple replications and the modified model with the double-time arrivals in Section 2.6. In this chapter, we’ll lead you on a tour through Arena by having you start up Arena, browse through the existing model we built for the hand simulation, run it, and then build it from scratch. Then we’ll use just these basic building blocks in a case study exploring a question of real interest, whether it’s better to have specialized serial processing or generalized parallel processing, and the effect of variability on such a decision. We’ll also explore the Arena user interface, get you into the help and documentation systems, discuss different ways to run your simulation, and illustrate some of the drawing and graphics tools.
Section 3.1 gets you to start Arena on your computer, and in Section 3.2, you’ll open an existing model and look around. In Section 3.3, you’ll go through the model in some detail, browsing the dialog boxes and animation, running the model, and taking a look at the results; in Section 3.4, you’ll construct this model from scratch. Section 3.5 contains the case study mentioned above. In Section 3.6, we’ll briefly go over many of Arena’s pieces and capabilities, including what’s available in the menus and toolbars and the drawing and printing capabilities. There’s a broad and deep help system in Arena, with all of the detailed technical documentation, which is the subject of Section 3.7. There are a lot of options for running and controlling simulations, which are discussed in Section 3.8.
By the end of this chapter, you’ll have a good feel for how Arena works and have an idea of the things you can do with it. You’ll be able to work effectively with Arena to build simple models and maybe take a stab at doing some
53
CHAPTER 3
A Guided Tour Through Arena
As we were honest enough to admit in Chapter 2, we really used Arena to carry out the
“hand” simulation in Section 2.4, as well as the multiple replications and the modified model with the double-time arrivals in Section 2.6. In this chapter, we’ll lead you on a tour through Arena by having you start up Arena, browse through the existing model we built for the hand simulation, run it, and then build it from scratch. Then we’ll use just these basic building blocks in a case study exploring a question of real interest, whether it’s better to have specialized serial processing or generalized parallel processing, and the effect of variability on such a decision. We’ll also explore the Arena user interface, get you into the help and documentation systems, discuss different ways to run your simulation, and illustrate some of the drawing and graphics tools.
Section 3.1 gets you to start Arena on your computer, and in Section 3.2, you’ll open an existing model and look around. In Section 3.3, you’ll go through the model in some detail, browsing the dialog boxes and animation, running the model, and taking a look at the results; in Section 3.4, you’ll construct this model from scratch. Section 3.5 contains the case study mentioned above. In Section 3.6, we’ll briefly go over many of Arena’s pieces and capabilities, including what’s available in the menus and toolbars and the drawing and printing capabilities. There’s a broad and deep help system in Arena, with all of the detailed technical documentation, which is the subject of Section 3.7. There are a lot of options for running and controlling simulations, which are discussed in Section 3.8.
By the end of this chapter, you’ll have a good feel for how Arena works and have an idea of the things you can do with it. You’ll be able to work effectively with Arena to build simple models and maybe take a stab at doing some