Downloading Excel data locally into GoldSim

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Jason

• April 04, 2017 16:22

This question was asked by a customer in December 2015 and we felt the question was good enough for all users to see.

Question:

“We have recently developed a water balance model for our Mine Site using actual data retrieved from our flow meters and input sheets. During each simulation, the model imports the relevant data from a destination Excel sheet. Is there a method of downloading the Excel data locally into GoldSim to make this process easier?

The idea behind the Excel data sheet is to actively calculate averages and standard deviations of our data when it's updated and, to facilitate user input, to avoid copy/pasting the data from Excel to GoldSim manually. In addition, saving the data locally would allow for its usage outside of our network.“

“So, right now the sheet is importing data from an Excel sheet located on a specific drive, so that someone on our site using the computers can access the data. GoldSim does this each simulation period; seeks out the Excel sheet and retrieves the values, populating temporary variables in GoldSim. At the end of the simulation period, these values are lost (I assume) as GoldSim wraps up. What I want to do is be able to download/update these values (such as averages and standard deviations) into GoldSim to avoid importing every simulation period.

The data would be imported just as static values; Excel does all the work of calculation. And they would mostly be 2-D matrices, with values of Average, StDev, Max and Min corresponding to each Month. Those values are used to population Stochastic Distributions.

If there is alternatively a way to retrieve an Excel Spreadsheet from a web address, that would also suffice for what I want it to do.”

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  Jason

  • April 04, 2017 16:22

  When you run your model, it will automatically import the data. This is the case for spreadsheet elements, lookup tables and time series elements that import data. But are you saying you would like to be able to run the import while in Edit mode, before you start your simulation? In that case, you could have a dashboard button that opens the lookup table element. Then you can click the button in the lookup table element that runs the import. Unfortunately, this might not be ideal if you have multiple lookup tables that import data. I think the closest thing to what you are talking about is a button command that updates all importing spreadsheet elements in the model. But we don't have something similar for lookup tables.

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  Jason

  • April 04, 2017 16:29
  • Edited

  I've looked into it a little bit more and I did confirm that if you use spreadsheet elements, and you have already done an initial import, you can thereafter run the model without the Excel file present. The below screen capture of a dashboard button illustrates this. In this case, you can click the 'Import All Data' button in the dashboard, in Edit mode, and it will update all spreadsheet elements.

  

   

  With the data then stored in the spreadsheet elements, you can put the .gsm file in a folder without the original Excel file and it will run. It will just issue a warning message, as shown in the first screenshot below, and log a warning in the run log, as shown in the second screenshot below.

  
  
  

  

  I believe that the behavior is the same for lookup tables and time series elements. The disadvantage in those cases, however, is that you don't have a dashboard button command (like you have for spreadsheet elements) that runs an Edit Mode import. But if you do want to use lookup tables instead of spreadsheet elements, can you consolidate the data import to just a few lookup tables using 2-D or 3-D lookup tables? To be able to do this, all data imported by a given lookup table has to have the same units.
  
  I hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions.

   

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