I routinely use the "links to/from element" feature for navigating and analysing models. In some cases, especially for containers, there are many linkages, and it would be useful to extract (copy or export) the relevant information in a tabulated (or text) format. This would be great, especially for documenting or auditing. Is there a way to do this?
Thanks,
Andras Paksy
Andras,
Thanks for posting in the forum! I want to make sure I understand what your needs are. When you say you use the links to/from element feature, are you talking about the Function of... and Affects commands in the right-click context menu of an element? 
Or are you talking about the dialog that appears when you double click on an influence line?
When it comes to the Container's interface, I'd like to know what you mean by the useful information about linkages you want to extract. Are you looking for the names of exposed outputs that are being used by expressions outside of the Container, like you see in the Exposed Outputs tab? What other information would you like to see regarding these outputs from a Container? Also, what would you like to see on the input side of a Container? Just the names of the linked elements or more than that?
In case you haven't tried it yet, I recommend that you look at the Model Inventory feature to see how you can export the model structure to an XML file. I'm curious to see if this meets some of your requirements. Stylesheets for XML Model Inventory File – GoldSim Help Center
-Jason
Hi Jason,
Thanks for the prompt response, and for the tip for using the Model Inventory feature. IM fact I was not aware of this - and it looks a very useful one for reviews and model audits. Unfortunately, it does not address my current question.
I would like to list all the links from an Excel element (called PVDS) within the model, containing a very large number (> 100) input data. These links are visible using the tooltip (right click on the bottom right corner --> "show links from element", producing
In comparison, the inventory features produces
with no further details.
What I would like (and perhaps is not possible to do) is to extract the information obtained using the tooltip (ie the full list of which parts is shown above) in an editable text format. That would be the first level of detail if you like, and even better would be to get the additional information, that is the path to the input element, as well, for each line in the table.
Further to the above, there is a potential workaround that I found, using the Model Inventory feature. This list includes content for Data elements, so where the input data from the Spreadsheet element is used in a data element, this information can be extracted, including the path as well. However, the above will not work for any other instances of using data form (in this case) the Spreadsheet element. This seem to suggest that it is good practice (for model transparency and checking of handling input data) viewpoint to use Data elements only for linking back to Spreadsheet elements, - even if some calculation is also involved in that step.
Andras,
I was going to suggest this idea of linking to the Data elements from the Spreadsheet element. I think this is probably the best workaround for now.
Doing this has another advantage besides the Model Inventory. In the case that you might want to remove the Spreadsheet element in the future, it will be a lot easier to do when each output is connected to an element like this. That way, you don't have to hunt around the model in buried input expressions of complex elements to replace the reference.
Yes indeed, thanks.
Just out of curiosity. Why is that that the information displayed (eg in the example above) on the linkages cannot be exported? There possibly complex reasons for this - so if it is really not practical to explain - feel free to ignore this. Perhaps naively, it can be thought that the information is available (as displayed) - so it could be sent to some output.
Andras,
The main reason I can think of is that printing the contents of dialogs like this requires more upkeep for us in the long-term. In the future, any change we make to an element could trigger a need to update this new printing feature you speak of. It makes the software more complex and so we would only do this if it was requested a lot.
Typically, an average GoldSim element output is connected to less than 10 other inputs so it doesn't have quite the impact as your element that has over 100 connections. I think your request could be isolated to situations where we are bringing in/out a lot of information like in a Spreadsheet element. In that isolated case, I can see why you would need a printout of all the outputs.
That being said, I can think of a way for this to work for you. I use a screen capture software called "Snagit" that helps us generate nice screen captures of dialogs in GoldSim. This software also allows you to grab text from the area you select. I tried this using Snagit on my link from a Spreadsheet element and was able to extract the text you need:
First, here is the image:
Next, here is the resulting text, extracted in Snagit:
From Output To Input
WGEN PAR.PW P WW V. Definition
WGEN PAR.PW P WD V. Definition
WGEN PAR.ALP Alpha V. Definition
WGEN PAR.TXM TXMD.Definition
WGEN PAR.TXM TXMW. Definition
WGEN PAR.TN TN. Definition
WGEN PAR.ATX ATX. Definition
WGEN PAR.ATN ATN. Definition
WGEN PAR.CVT CVTX. Definition
WGEN PAR.ACV ACVTX. Definition
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