Visualization of event execution in a discrete event system
Samantha C. Collins, Nathan D. Gonda, Lee C. Dumaliang, James F. Leathrum, Roland R. Mielke · Annual Simulation Symposium · 2017
In discrete event simulation development, a large conceptual leap often is made when going from the system model to the simulation implementation. The event model, describing how events are scheduled and executed, is implied rather than explicitly stated. This paper addresses the gap by introducing a new visualization tool based on event graphs. Given an event graph representation of the event model, the tool allows the developer to observe the execution and scheduling of events during simulation execution. The use of the visualization tool encourages students to explicitly consider the event model, thus providing additional insight to the relationship between the model and the implementation. To better support more general discrete event simulation development efforts, including software development and verification and validation activities, future research will consider interfacing the visualization tool with simulation software tools and developing the capability to reverse engineer the event model from an existing simulation.