This panel allows you to specify the Start and End date and time values for a model.
mm/dd/yyyy: When a model is created, the Start date will be set to January 1 of the current calendar year, and the End date to January 1 of the upcoming calendar year. You may enter any valid date in these fields, in the specified format, from 1/1/1000 through 12/31/9999, inclusive. You can select portions of the date and type replacement values. It is important to keep the slash characters ("/"), however, in order for the final value to be recognized as a legitimate date. You can place your cursor in portions of the field and use the up and down spinner buttons with a mouse, or use the up and down arrows on your keyboard, to increment or decrement that portion of the date. This will cause other portions to change as appropriate. For example, with a date of 02/28/2001, incrementing the day will automatically change the month to "03". Note that SIMPROCESS uses a Gregorian calendar. Therefore, leap year rules and other calendar changes which have occurred during this time period are automatically applied when "spinning" portions of the date. Upon leaving the field (by using the tab key, or by clicking another field or a button), an invalid value will be adjusted in one of two ways: it will be restored to the previous correct value, or it will be adjusted using "lenient date rules." An example of the latter can be seen by setting the date to 02/29/2001 and tabbing out of the field. The date is automatically adjusted to 03/01/2001, since 2001 was not a leap year.
In addition to these input methods, you can use the calendar button that appears immediately after each date. Clicking on it will display a calendar popup just below the button, with month and year fields at the top. You can pull down and select directly from the list of months or use the spinner buttons to increment or decrement the month. When using the spinner buttons, the year field will change appropriately if you go into another calendar year, and the calendar will update accordingly. The year field allows typing values directly or using a spinner. When typing, invalid year values will appear in red and valid ones will be green. Values typed in manually will not change the calendar display until you press enter (or return), however. At any time, clicking on a day number in the calendar will select that date and hide the popup. Should you change your mind about using the popup to select a date, you can usually click in an empty area of the dialog; however, after changing the date and/or year fields this will sometimes not work until you click the calendar button again.
hh:mm:ss: When a new model is created, both the Start and End times are set to 00:00:00. SIMPROCESS uses a 24-hour clock, so this equates to midnight on the date in the corresponding Start or End date field. The values that may be entered range up to 23:59:59. Like the date field described above, these values may be edited manually, or you can increment or decrement individual portions via arrows on the keyboard or using a mouse and the spinner buttons. The colons (":") must remain in order for the value to be correct. As with dates, if you exit the field with an invalid value, it will be adjusted to a valid value. The "lenient date rules" may also be applied, so that (for example) a value of 62 minutes would result in adjusting the minutes back to "02" and incrementing the hour by one. In the time fields, that may also result in wrapping the entire time past 23:59:59 (the preceding date field will not be changed if such wrapping occurs).
msec: You can enter a number of milliseconds from 0 to 999. This value may be edited manually, or you can increment or decrement using keyboard arrows or a mouse and the spinner buttons. If you leave the field with an invalid value, its value will be restored to the last legal value it contained.
usec: You can enter a number of microseconds from 0 to 999. This value may be edited manually, or you can increment or decrement using keyboard arrows or a mouse and the spinner buttons. If you leave the field with an invalid value, its value will be restored to the last legal value it contained.
nsec: You can enter a number of nanoseconds from 0 to 999. This value may be edited manually, or you can increment or decrement using keyboard arrows or a mouse and the spinner buttons. If you leave the field with an invalid value, its value will be restored to the last legal value it contained.
NOTE: SIMPROCESS does not check to ensure that the date and time specified in the End fields is later than the date and time in the Start fields.