Simlin: a system dynamics modeling tool

Simlin is an open source tool for creating and editing System Dynamics models. You can try it today at https://simlin.com.

Controls

• Shift-click on the background to reposition the canvas (and drag selection doesn't currently do something).
• Click the blue edit button to show/hide new object creation tools.
  • use these tools by highlighting one of them and clicking on an existing item (in the case of "link" and maybe "flow"), or on the background of the canvas.
• Create a new flow by clicking-down on a stock (or on a blank spot on the canvas) and dragging.
• Detach + reposition/reattach flows + links by clicking-down on arrowheads and moving them over a new target. The new target should highlight as green.
• Click on a variable name to edit the name.
• In equations, you can either refer to the variables like "var name" (with quotes), or like var_name (replacing spaces with underscores).
• The arrows in the bottom right are Undo and Redo - there is currently a 10-change limit for undos, and if you undo into the past + make a change (like moving something), you won't be able to redo-back those changes.
• If you mouse-down and drag a label you can adjust its position relative to the variable.

Known issues

• If you select a variable that is under the "search" box, the sheet showing variable details will cover that part of the model (you can manually shift-click the background and reposition the diagram to get out of/around this).
• Drag selection isn't implemented yet.
• You can only detach the arrowhead of a flow, not the origin/source end.
• Undo/redo only applies within a browser tab. If you restart your browser (or reload the page), you will lose the ability to undo to before the reload.
• Only straight-line flows are supported for now.
• Maybe more! See the Issues page for additional info (and to report a bug or usability issue)

Local development

# dependencies; ignore warnings
$ yarn install
# build everything -- necessary to compile the rust simulation engine to WebAssembly
$ yarn build
# (the next 3 commands don't exit on their own -- they should be run in 3 separate terminals)
# start a local Firestore instance using the Google Cloud SDK
$ yarn start:firestore
# in another tab:
$ yarn start:backend
# in third and final tab:
$ yarn start:frontend

Now to the browser!

You can start local development + iteration on http://localhost:3000/