AnyLogic – multi-method simulation software
AnyLogic is the first and only dynamic simulation tool that brings together System Dynamics, Process-centric (AKA Discrete Event), and Agent Based approaches within one modeling language and one model development environment. The language of AnyLogic has unmatched flexibility and enables the user to capture the complexity and heterogeneity of business, economy and social systems at any desirable level of details. AnyLogic set of primitives and library objects allows you to model manufacturing and logistics, business processes, human resources, consumers’ and patients’ behavior, as well as the environment (the “background”) in their natural interaction. The object-oriented model design paradigm supported by AnyLogic provides for modular and incremental construction of large models. (See also AnyLogic feature list.)
AnyLogic is the choice of thousands users worldwide, hundreds of commercial and governmental organizations and hundreds of universities. AnyLogic user community is constantly growing both because of migration from other tools and because AnyLogic makes simulation modeling applicable in new areas. AnyLogic has become a corporate standard for simulation in many global companies.
AnyLogic 6 (released in April 2007)
AnyLogic 6 is based on Java and Eclipse framework that has been adopted by leading companies as business application platform. Due to Eclipse AnyLogic now runs on most OSes (Windows, Mac, Linux, etc.) and has native look and feel on all of them. AnyLogic supports teamwork: a large project may be partitioned into components that are developed by different people yet can be opened simultaneously in AnyLogic workspace and committed and updated in the version control system directly from the model development environment.
AnyLogic 6 simulation engine has been redesigned and significantly improved. The models now run 5-20 times faster than in version 5. The memory footprint of all model constructs has been drastically reduced, which is particularly important for agent based modeling. You can now run several millions of agents on a standard 1GB machine, in other words you can simulate the complete population of a large city with every person having individual properties.
Interactive GUI with animation is a part of AnyLogic model, and animation editor – a part of model development environment. The editor supports a large variety of graphical shapes, controls (sliders, buttons, text inputs, etc.), and image and CAD import. AnyLogic animation is scalable and hierarchical: you can, for example, create a global view on the manufacturing process with some aggregated indicators as well as detailed animations of particular operations, and switch between them.
AnyLogic includes a wide range of data analysis and business graphics objects designed to efficiently process and visualize dynamically changing data during the simulation: bar, pie, stack charts, time plots, histograms, etc.
AnyLogic language for complex data structure definition, algorithms, and external connectivity is Java. If needed, the modeler can extend the functionality of AnyLogic graphical constructs with pieces of Java code, which gives virtually unlimited flexibility. For the user convenience AnyLogic offers full Eclipse Java “code completion”: wherever you are typing, AnyLogic suggests what variables, functions, etc. you can use so you do not need to lookup them in other parts of the model or in the reference.
Java makes AnyLogic models truly cross-platform, moreover, they even can be published as applets and run remotely in a web browser (see examples). The models can be integrated into larger IT infrastructures, such as corporate Decision Support Systems.
When the simulation model is completed, the modeler typically defines and runs various experiments with it. AnyLogic supports Simulation, Compare Runs, Parameter variation, Monte Carlo, Sensitivity Analysis, Optimization and Custom type experiments. AnyLogic includes fully integrated newest Java release of OptQuest™ optimizer from OptTek, Inc. that was specifically designed to work with simulation models and supports optimization under uncertainty. You can also use the optimizer to calibrate your model against the historical data.
