Error handling

SimSyn is in an initiale stage of development. So far little time has been spent on testing software functionality. Please report any issues, bugs and weird or unexpected software behavior per e-mail. I really appreciate your help.

Parsing Errors

Parsing errors are probably the most frequently occuring problems with SimSyn. The procedure of parsing Vensim models to code is pretty sensitive to typos, ambiguities in Vensim equations and models.

Here is a list of problems observed so far:

#	Type	Wrong	Right	Explanation
1	Equation	temp. ^ 4 * x	(temp. ^ 4) * x	ambiguous equation
2	Variable name	°C	Degree celsius	symbol error
3	Equation	DELAY1(Input, 1 )	DELAY1(Input, 1)	empty space
4	Equation	IF THEN ELSE (a<>b, 1, 0)	refrain from using <>	unsupported function
5	Equation	DELAY FIXED( 1 , 2 , 1)	refrain from using DELAY FIXED()	unsupported function
6	Equation	DELAY1(A*B, 1)	DELAY1(C, 1) calculate C as A*B before	unspecified

Moreover, only a subset of the Vensim functionality can be translated to code. Check section 1.2.7 on in the PySD documentation to identify supported translator functions.

Uncaught errors

Not every exception could be caught by an error message. In case of a runtime error, however, an error message is reported in a log-file which is created by the system once the application is closed. The log-file named ‘SimSyn.exe.log’ is located in the SimSynEXE folder and may help fixing problems.