BOXARR v5.7 Released

What’s New in BOXARR 5.7

We are delighted to announce the release of BOXARR 5.7. This release brings a wide range of enhancements and capability improvements – making it even easier for users to build, visualise, analyse and optimise their BOXARR models.

Following is a summary of what’s new in the BOXARR platform.

New in BOXARR ScaleBridge 5.7

BOXARR ScaleBridge now utilises Apache TomCat as its middleware engine. This migration now provides BOXARR with the power, flexibility, and performance of the leading industry standard, open-sourced server.

New in BOXARR nVision 5.7

The model menu and right-click menus have been redesigned for efficiency, and intuitive workflows.

The concept of ‘Formatting’ objects in the model has been introduced. Formats of objects include Labels, Colours, Size, Images, Icons, and much more. All these configurations are under the control of ‘Types’ and ‘Functions’. Now users can easily configure the objects in a BOXARR model display just the right information and analyses for any range of applications application.

Users now have more options over the Formatting of Arrow Types. The arrowheads can now be formatted at both ends of an Arrow (i.e. the target-end and the source-end).

The scheduling capability has been further enhanced. Users are no longer required to have a ‘Work Centre’ Context in every Model. The scheduling process is now also much easier, without the need for detailed resource modelling; while also improving detailed discrete-event based scheduling for models which need it.

Functions can be selectively displayed on the Properties Pane (by Type). This makes custom analyses more accessible to the user.

Every model now has its own unique embedded Library; making the creation of models easy. Once the user has created the set of Types, Fields, and Functions their model requires, they can simply copy this configuration to a sharable Library for reuse in other models.

The Macros capability has been enhanced. Macros can now be used to record workflows and then action them on demand. For example: importing or exporting data to/from specific data maps; or setting Fields from Functions analyses; or staged-filtering of models; or effectively any step-by-step operation. Macro sequences can then be set to automatically repeat in a loop – for either a specified number of operations, or until a nominated criterion is met on any Box, Arrow or Group. This capability now enables users to build complete algorithms within the BOXARR Functions Framework for facilitating clustering, optimisation, and more.

The concept of ‘Layers’ has been introduced to BOXARR. Models are now created in a ‘Master Layer’ (i.e. baseline). Users can then create any number of additional Layers over the Master. These Layers can be used to edit the model or apply analyses within that specific Layer; without affecting the Master. Layers can then be merged back into the Master to create a new baseline. This capability is invaluable for facilitating ‘what-if’ analysis, model versioning, and much more.

The ‘WBS Element’ and ‘Work Centre’ Context names are now both editable (and the Work Centre Context is now entirely optional). This provides users with the flexibility to name their model Contexts with greater relevance to the many domains which BOXARR models can address.

Functions can now perform complex Date Arithmetic, to facilitate a wide range of new calculations involving dates.

The ‘elementsIf’ Function, has been enhanced; enabling users to do more sophisticated Filtering in Functions, on the fly.

Users can now control a Function’s evaluation. This means that long-running Function calculations can be deferred by the user until they are ready for them to operate.

Users can now ‘auto-group’ the Boxes in a model against any of their properties; including Groups, and much more.

Users can now re-orient the Network layout of their model for left-to-right and bottom-to-top orientation.

Users can now export Functions & Fields in a CSV file format, which ‘maps’ the inter-dependencies between them, and associates each item with a unique ID. This means that users can now use such files to build a model which visualises how a Functional analysis actually works. This feature is also invaluable when importing Functions into another model, as the ‘map’ can guide the user in which order to import and test the various Functions.

New in BOXARR nSight 5.7

The pop-up summaries assigned to clusters in the ‘Map View’ can now be defined with a numerical field or function.

Boxes, Arrows, and Groups in the ‘Network View’ can now be individually coloured by Functions.

The ‘Network View’ now supports additional layout topographies for visualising models – including: Hierarchic; Organic; Orthogonal, Circular; Radial; Tree; Generic Tree; Balloon; and Series Parallel.

Arrows in the ‘Network View’ can now be labelled with their properties.

Users can now also filter models against the data fields of Arrows.

The number of data field Filters which can be applied is now unlimited.

The ‘Network View’ and ‘Map View’ settings panels have been refreshed and are now more intuitive to use.

Dashboard charts/graphs can now be created with multiple Y-axis and linear X-axis scaling.