Using Custom Visualization for Entities

R2026b
Open Script

Overview

These examples show how you can create MATLAB®-based custom visualization for entities. The example illustrates the visualization of a restaurant layout with customer entities entering, dining, and leaving.

Structure of Model

The model contains the following major components:

  • The Resource Pool block models the tables in the restaurant. Since there are 10 tables in the restaurant, the resource amount is 10.

  • The Entity Generator block (Patron Enter) generates entities representing customers. They enter a waiting area, represented by a Resource Acquire. Here they wait for a free table.

  • When a table is available for a customer, he can move to the Entity Server block which models the duration of eating.

  • When the customer is done eating, he releases the table back to the pool and exits the restaurant.

modelname = 'seCustomVisualization';
open_system(modelname);

Visualizing the Restaurant

seRestaurantAnimator visualizes the restaurant as follows:

  • seRestaurantAnimator provides the visualization of the restaurant layout for the model.

  • It generates the figure containing the layout of a restaurant with an entrance, a waiting area, 10 dining tables, and an exit.

  • As entities move during the simulation, it creates a marker (glyph) for each entity in the figure and programs motion for the marker so that it appears to move from one point to another.

  • The animator assigns a table ID for each waiting customer and shows the customer moving to the table.

  • To inspect the attributes of the customer entity, pause the model and click a customer entity glyph. The figure displays the TimeToDine attribute.

  • To make the motion appear continuous, it uses a MATLAB timer to periodically execute a function that incrementally moves each entity towards its destination.

  • It uses MATLAB graphics to display statistics on the figure about the number of entities entering, waiting, and leaving.

  • Clicking an entity in the visualization displays the attributes that it contains. It uses a MATLAB graphics callback to program a ButtonDownFcn on each entity marker.

animator = seRestaurantAnimator;

To simulate the model, enter:

sim(modelname);

Warning: Error occurred while executing the listener callback for event
PostEntry defined for class simevents.Storage:
Error using indexing
The specified key is not present in this container.

Error in seRestaurantAnimator/scheduleMotion (line 318)
                motionData = this.mTimerData(num2str(entity.ID));
                             ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Error in seRestaurantAnimator/postEntry (line 217)
                this.scheduleMotion(entity, target);
                ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Error in slde.SimulationStorageObserverHelper/postEntry

Error in
slde.SimulationStorageObserverHelper>@(e,a)postEntry(objWeakRef.Handle,e,a)

Error in CustomVisualizationExample (line 42)
sim(modelname);
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Error in evalmxdom>instrumentAndRun (line 119)
text = evalc(evalstr);
       ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Error in evalmxdom (line 24)
[data,text,laste] =
instrumentAndRun(file,cellBoundaries,imageDir,imagePrefix,options);
                    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Error in publish (line 166)
    dom = evalmxdom(file,dom,cellBoundaries,prefix,imageDir,outputDir,options);
    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Error in mwtools.publishExample (line 115)
    publish(name, opts);
    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Error in publish_examples1 (line 37)
mwtools.publishExample('CustomVisualizationExample')
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Error in BML (line 13)
        evalin('base', s);
        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 


close(animator.getFigureHandle);
close_system(modelname);
clear modelname animator

See Also

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