Organize simulations

After completing many runs, users may wish to organize them in various ways. One possibility is to add labels to the runs as well as adding searchable comments. Users can set the view filter to only show runs with (or without) particular labels, as well as runs with similar names, or runs meeting a custom search requirement of their choice. Users can and should back up their runs (both configurations and results sets) using SimTracker. Archive runs that are no longer needed (deleting executed runs from the SimTracker is not recommended). Users can also, export and import runs to share with others. This tutorial will illustrate labeling, filtering, and archiving a completed simulation, then importing it back into SimTracker. To prepare for this tutorial, please try running an additional simulation following the steps in Tutorial Design, execute and upload a simulation, giving it a unique name. After uploading the results, proceed with this tutorial (Figures [fig:tutOrganize] - [fig:tutOrganize2]).

  1. First, add a grouping category to SimTracker by going to the Settings menu and choosing Groups (Figure [fig:tutOrganize:01]).
  2. When the group list appears, click the ’Add line’ button and in the left cell of the new line that appears, enter a group name ’testgroup’ (Figure [fig:tutOrganize:02]). Then click the ’Save’ button and close the window. The entry ’testgroup’ will now appear in the list of groups on the SimTracker.
  3. Next, ensure that the view is set to ’Successfully ran’ so that the completed runs show. Then, click the MyFirstRingDemo entry in the table to select it.
  4. Next, find the ’testgroup’ entry in the group list and click it. The label ’testgroup’ should appear in the ’labels’ section of the simulation entry (Figure [fig:tutOrganize:03], highlighted section).
  5. Now, from the view filter menu, choose ’Group A,B,C filter’ (Figure [fig:tutOrganize:04]).
  6. In the dialog box that appears, find the line for ’testgroup’ and from the menu next to it, pick the equals sign entry (=), then click OK (Figure [fig:tutOrganize:05]).
  7. Now, the only run showing in the SimTracker should be MyFirstRingDemo (Figure [fig:tutOrganize:06]).
  8. Again select the MyFirstRingDemo run and now from the File menu, choose ’archive’ (Figure [fig:tutOrganize:07]). Users can archive many runs simultaneously by selecting all desired runs before choosing the ’archive’ command, but this tutorial will only archive one.
  9. An input dialog will appear, allowing the user to enter a name for the archive. Enter a name such as ’MyTestArchive’, and click ’Save’ (Figure [fig:tutOrganize:08]). SimTracker will create an archive in the backup folder under the name specified by the user. The backup folder is automatically created in the same directory where the other repositories are stored.
  10. After MATLAB has created the archive, it will ask if the user is ready to delete the archived files from SimTracker. Click ’Yes’ and the archival process is complete (Figure [fig:tutOrganize:09]). Note: users who want to create a backup file of a run without removing it from SimTracker, can do so by choosing File>Backup rather than the Archive command.
  11. Now, the run should have disappeared from the SimTracker. Change the view setting to ’All’ and verify that the run no longer appears (Figure [fig:tutOrganize:10]).
  12. Next, import the run back into SimTracker by going to the File menu and choosing ’Open’ (Figure [fig:tutOrganize:11]).
  13. In the dialog box that appears, click the second option and then select the saved archive from the list (Figure [fig:tutOrganize:12]).
  14. Click OK. The run should now appear in the SimTracker table again.

Tutorials