Flowchart Plots

Plots can be created and viewed by clicking the Plot icon located on the Simulation page of the control panel for each event analysis flowchart.

If you click the Plot icon before the flowchart has been simulated, you will be prompted to simulate the flowchart and then the data will be plotted in the plot sheet. (Note that the Plot icon on the Plot sheet control panel refreshes the plot. If data or settings have been changed since the flowchart was last simulated, you must resimulate before refreshing the plot.)

You can add additional plot sheets to the flowchart by right-clicking the sheet index tabs at the bottom of the window and choosing Insert Simulation Plot on the shortcut menu. You can delete a plot sheet from the flowchart by selecting the plot sheet, right-clicking and choosing Delete Plot.

There are five plot types available for event analysis flowcharts. Not all plot types are available for all simulation settings. In addition, there are restrictions on the types of data that can be plotted on each plot type at each simulation setting.

• Result Storages Plot shows the value(s) of one or more result storage blocks plotted against either the result index (in the case of a single simulation run) or the modified variable (in the case of sensitivity analysis or multiple analyses). You can show results for single-value and array result storage blocks within the same plot.
• Result Comparison Plot shows the value(s) of two result storage blocks plotted against each other. Both result storage blocks must be either single-result or array; you cannot compare a single-value result storage block against an array result storage block. For single-run simulations, only array result storage blocks can be compared.
• Pie Chart displays the value(s) of one or more result storage blocks in pie chart format. This plot is available only for single-run simulations and for analyses where one variable is modified. For single-run simulations, you can plot the results of multiple single-value result storage blocks or of one array result storage block. For sensitivity/multiple analyses, you can plot the results of one single-value result storage block.
• Bar Chart displays the value(s) of one or more result storage blocks in bar chart format. This plot is available only for single-run simulations and for analyses where one variable is modified. For single-run simulations, you can plot the results of multiple single-value result storage blocks or of one array result storage block. For sensitivity/multiple analyses, you can plot the results of one single-value result storage block. In cases where you can select multiple result storage blocks, you can click Select Results by Value to specify the number of blocks to show in the plot. You can choose to show the blocks with the largest values or the smallest values.
• Probability Plot plots the values of one or more result storage blocks against the cumulative probability of the values, based on the ranking method (Median Ranks or Kaplan-Meier) selected on the Plot page of the Application Setup. For single-run simulations, you can plot the results of one or more array result storage blocks. For sensitivity/multiple analyses where one variable is modified, you can plot the results of one or more single-value and/or array result storage blocks. For sensitivity/multiple analyses where two variables are modified, you can plot the results of one single-value or array result storage block.

The Plot Sheet control panel changes depending on the selected plot type and the simulation settings that have been used, so that it is easy for you to meet the requirements for the plot you are generating. When only one item can be plotted on an axis or on a plot, the selection area will be a drop-down list. When multiple items can be plotted, the selection area will be a list with check boxes. You can change the sort order of the list by clicking the Sort List icon to open the Sort List window. The list order also affects the order in which items are shown in the plot legend and, therefore, line appearance settings such as color, which are applied according to the order in which they appear in the legend.

In both cases, the type of each result storage block will be marked in parentheses next to the block name. For those plots where you can plot only single results or only arrays, the software will display only the result storage blocks of the correct type. For the Result Comparison plot, once you have selected the result storage block for the X-axis, only result storage blocks of the same type (i.e., single-value or array) will be displayed in the selection area for the Y-axis, as you cannot plot single values against arrays.

The Probability plot offers one additional option. You can use the Scale drop-down list to select the scale you would like to use for the plot.