Ths version has two main purposes:
- To incorporate new functions allowing Simile to conform to the core XMILE standard
- To improve memory management, enabling very large models to be edited and executed more easily.
XMILE
XMILE is a new standard, currently under development, enabling system dynamics models to be exchanged between a variety of modelling tools. It will also allow models to be processed by a range of data presentation and comparison tools.
The draft core XMILE standard contains a number of functions which were not included in Simile v6.5, so these have now been added, enabling models to be 'round-tripped' -- loaded from XMILE specifications into Simile, and then exported to re-create the original XMILE specification. Since the standard is incomplete, the actual import/export functionality is not yet included -- this will be added in a later version of Simile.
An example of the new functions available is the forecst() function.
Memory management
Up until now, the largest model that can be handled by Simile contains around 2000 equations. Better memory management in v6.6 extends this to around 4000 equations, and means that working with large models will not affect other applications running on the same computer so much.
Do keep in mind that it is always better to build models with a few equations but many submodel instances than to copy-and-paste the same set of model components in your diagram.