New Licensing Tools Coming to GoldSim in Early 2016

Posted by Rick Kossik

Software licensing tools are usually intended to be something that neither the user (you) nor the software vendor (us) want to have to think about often.  In a perfect world, you activate or register your software, and then don't want to have to think about it again for a long time (e.g., perhaps until you upgrade the license or extend the maintenance subscription one year later). Although this is the case for many people, we have found that a growing number of our users want more flexibility and capabilities with how they manage their licenses.  To address this, we've spent the last year implementing a powerful new licensing system that among other things, will make it easier for users to track and share licenses within an organization. In this blog, I provide a quick overview of the new licensing features.

Dynamic Coupling of GoldSim and MODFLOW / MT3D

Posted by Jason Lillywhite

From time to time, we hear from GoldSim users asking about the possibility of linking MODFLOW with GoldSim dynamically. This is important because the combined model is useful for integrating accurate groundwater flow and transport models with decision support, hydrologic, and probabilistic models built in GoldSim. Folks at Barr Engineering were able to pull this off using a realistic hypothetical application and presented their application at the poster session of our 2015 User Conference.

GoldSim Training Course in Tucson in December

Posted by Rick Kossik

I'll be teaming with Dave Hoekstra of SRK Consulting to teach a 3-day course entitled "Developing Mine Water Balances in GoldSim" December 3-5 in Tucson. This course is being held in conjunction with the Society for Mining, Metallurgy, & Exploration (SME) Arizona Conference. I'll be leading the first two days, which are targeted at people new to GoldSim and will cover basic use of GoldSim. Dave will spend the third day focusing on water balance modeling. If you are already familiar with GoldSim, you can attend just the third day. You can read more about the course and register here.

Powerful Decision Making for a Phosphate Mine

Posted by Jason Lillywhite

One of the winners of the 2015 User Conference poster session presented on a GoldSim application for a phosphate mine in central Florida. After reading more about this application, I began to better appreciate the great work that Cardno has been involved in. The phosphate mining industry faces very strict effluent limitations while having to manage several hundred gallons of water around the site every day. The model must account for a continuously changing landscape of flow paths and operating schemes under varying hydrologic conditions. Read about how GoldSim is being used to help the mining company make better decisions as they comply with these changing regulations.

Photos from the User Conference

Posted by Jason Lillywhite

The 2015 GoldSim User Conference was held September 24th and 25th in Seattle and was a big success. Here are some photos showing the highlights of the conference, including the social events and poster presentations. 

GoldSim Model Beauty Contest Winner: Moneyball!

Posted by Rick Kossik

A tradition at our User Conference is to hold a "Model Beauty Contest".  The Beauty Contest is held at the end of the Conference, and is intended to allow our users to focus on the fun side of modeling and simulation.  Beauty Contest entries typically describe a modeling application that is light-hearted (such as a game), amusing (e.g., probabilistically simulating the length of the restroom lines at a football stadium), or simply entertaining. This year's winner (as determined by a vote of attendees) was Joe Donnelly's "Moneyball" model.

GoldSim User Conference Poster Session

Posted by Rick Kossik

We just wrapped up our User Conference in downtown Seattle, and it was lots of fun.  The conference was attended by nearly 60 people from six countries.  In addition to invited papers, a panel discussion, and a day of advanced training, one of the highlights of the conference was the poster session, where attendees presented a wide variety of interesting GoldSim applications. This post provides a list of poster abstracts and presents the winners (as selected by attendees) of the best poster presentation.

Pre-Conference Training has Started!

Posted by Ryan Roper

The first wave of GoldSim users have arrived to participate in our 2-day pre-conference training course at the Washington Athletic Club in downtown Seattle. This is a prelude to our 2015 GoldSim User Conference, which will start on Thursday. The night before conference kickoff, attendees (55 in total), coming from six different countries, will enjoy a pre-conference meet-up at the Fado Irish Pub.

Advanced training on the first day of the conference will be a mix of training classes and informal discussions in which attendee participation is encouraged. The day will end with a fun social event on a privately chartered boat ride in the Puget Sound. On the last day of the conference, presentations of invited papers, poster presentations and a panel discussion will provide opportunities for attendees to network, share experiences and participate in interesting discussions.

We expect to have a really great time this week!

GoldSim: The Swiss Army Knife of Simulation Tools

Posted by Ryan Roper

I recently sat in on a great guest webinar (John's Grab Bag of Tips 'n' Tricks) presented by a long-time GoldSim user, John Tauxe, and I was impressed by how he has stretched the bounds of GoldSim's capabilities. At its core, GoldSim is a versatile simulation tool that incorporates probabilistic, discrete events and system dynamics modeling. That alone makes it quite unique among simulation tools. With nearly 40 core elements as well as almost 20 more specialized elements, there is significant flexibility in the way you can model physical, engineered, financial and business systems. If you think about it long enough, there's probably a way to do what you need to do with the built-in elements and modeling capabilities of GoldSim.

http://www.thisiswhyimbroke.com/the-ultimate-swiss-army-knife

But John's webinar also highlighted a whole other world of things that you can do with GoldSim. From internal documentation to graphics drawing tools to dashboards and more, GoldSim is more than just its core simulation capabilities. In the world of simulation tools, it's actually quite like having a corkscrew, nail file, scissors and toothpick on your pocket knife. Here, I want to highlight a few things that stood out to me in John's webinar. I'd also like to make mention of some features of GoldSim that I have used to my advantage in developing a system for automated verification testing of GoldSim. This includes using Spreadsheet elements to export test results to Excel, recording Time Series elements to store expected results for comparison and a batch file to run multiple tests automatically one after the other.

GoldSim in the Academic Community

Posted by Ryan Roper

Most of you are probably aware that GoldSim is used for a wide variety of commercial applications including mine water balance, water resource management, radioactive waste management, project planning and risk and reliability analysis. There are active commercial users in over 50 countries (http://www.goldsim.com/Web/Solutions/Customers/). In addition to these, however, we have another group of users that you may not be aware of: the academic community. There are GoldSim academic licenses at about 150 universities in over 40 different countries.

Learning to Use GoldSim

Posted by Rick Kossik

I am often asked what is the best way to learn GoldSim. Although GoldSim’s intuitive interface will tempt you to simply dive in and start playing with the software, you are strongly discouraged from doing so, even if you are an experienced modeler.  Spending an hour or so up front (by following a few basic steps) is the quickest and most effective way to understand the software’s features and capabilities and start building models in GoldSim. This blog provides some simple tips.

Examples of Dashboards

Posted by Jason Lillywhite

2018 Update: We have posted newer examples of dashboards using a newer version of GoldSim, here.

Do you want to add a dashboard to your GoldSim model but need some ideas on how to design it? Are you looking for ways to improve its functionality and ease of use? If so, maybe some of the examples shown below will give you some useful ideas. In this blog post, I have included screen captures of some models that highlight various approaches to building effective dashboards.

Modeling Runoff from Multiple Catchments using a Vector Splitter

Posted by Jason Lillywhite

If you have some flow of material or a transaction and need to divide it up or allocate it, likely you will use the Allocator or Splitter element in GoldSim. While these elements are very powerful and make the job a lot easier, there is one condition for which it was not specifically built: handling an array of input amounts. To address this, we have added some nice examples to our library that allow you to simulate allocations and splits on arrays of data. These examples provide an easy way to build powerful models that might have otherwise been quite difficult to build and maintain. I tested the array splitter example model using a real-world example that simulates rainfall runoff in a new stormwater management system, and this is described in this post.

Register for the GoldSim User Conference and Training Workshop Before July 31

Posted by Rick Kossik

The GoldSim User Conference is just around the corner.  It will be held in Seattle on September 24 and 25, 2015. The conference will be preceded (on September 22 and 23) by a two day training workshop (focusing on novice users). This training session prior to the conference provides a great opportunity for novice users to get trained and then stick around and meet and learn from experienced users. There is a 50% discount to those who register for the conference before July 31.

Using GoldSim to Simulate Projects

Posted by Jason Lillywhite

The planning and management of programs and large projects is inherently difficult, not only due to their complexity, but also because something almost always goes wrong (Murphy’s Law!). By combining the flexibility of a general-purpose and highly-graphical probabilistic simulation framework with specialized features to support financial modeling and scenario analysis, GoldSim is ideally suited as a high-level project planning tool suitable during the feasibility assessment and conceptual design phases, while the exact scope of the program is still in flux and it is critical to simulate the range of possible outcomes.

Probabilistic Risk Assessment of Space Missions Using GoldSim

Posted by Rick Kossik

Many of you are very familiar with how GoldSim has been used for many years to carry out simulations of environmental systems, such as mines, water supply systems and hazardous waste sites. However, because GoldSim was designed as a flexible probabilistic simulation system, there are many cool and interesting applications in a wide variety of other arenas.  Perhaps one of the most interesting is the use of GoldSim for probabilistic risks assessments of space missions.

Stakeholder Involvement for Environmental Flow Alternatives

Posted by Jason Lillywhite

Sometimes it is a challenge to involve a diverse audience in the modeling process of a complex system. It is important that you adequately reflect the complexities of the system while at the same time present the results clearly and concisely for people that have different perspectives. Recently, Ryan Morrison (USGS) and Mark Stone (Assistant professor at UNM) were able to leverage the visual and dynamic strengths of GoldSim to successfully involve a diverse group of stakeholders in evaluating flow alternatives for the Rio Chama basin, New Mexico. I wanted to highlight this modeling application because of its unique approach within the world of dynamic simulation and to demonstrate the utility of GoldSim's new scenario management capability.

Playing Mastermind with GoldSim

Posted by Ryan Roper

This last weekend, I went into nerd mode and created a GoldSim version of the classic game Mastermind. If you're not familiar with Mastermind, here's the Wikipedia article about it: Mastermind (board game). According to the article, "Mastermind...is a code-breaking game for two players. The modern game with pegs was invented in 1970 by Mordecai Meirowitz, an Israeli postmaster and telecommunications expert. It resembles an earlier pencil and paper game called Bulls and Cows that may date back a century or more." I play this game with my kids and it often leaves me musing about what kind of strategy or algorithm I might devise to more systematically make guesses to solve the code. This musing usually lasts about 5 or 10 minutes before I decide it's not worth my time and I go on with my life. However, recently I thought it would be a fun and interesting exercise to create a GoldSim version of Mastermind.

White Space

Posted by Jason Lillywhite

The way you use white space in your GoldSim expressions can make a significant difference in readability. In this post, I walk through a series of examples that illustrate my personal preferences and pet peeves, which I hope might be useful for you as you establish guidelines within your modeling team.

Review of Academic Journal Articles that Refer to GoldSim

Posted by Jason Lillywhite

I recently searched for academic journal articles using Google Scholar to see what kinds of GoldSim applications have been written about in the past year or so. Despite the limitations inherent in this type of search, I was able to compile a reasonable list of modeling application categories. The results of this search returned a surprisingly broad spectrum of use cases in engineering, science and business. I was expecting to see one or two dominant areas of focus but instead found a rather uniform spectrum. Many of the applications incorporated uncertainty and/or decision support, which I was pleased to see.