Using Metrics to Monitor Activity

The Metrics feature allows you to create a way to collect data that can be monitored in the scene while the simulation runs. The metrics can be created at the Mechanisms or Scenes level.

To create a metric:

1. Open a mechanism or scene.

2. In the Toolbox, double-click the Metrics icon.

3. In the resulting dialog panel, click the Add button.

4. Enter a name, type, physical dimension, interval and OnChanged flag. The interval is the frequency (in frames) at which the data will be collected. For example, if the interval is 60, the value will be collected every 60 frames. The OnChanged flag, if set to true, will collect data when the value changes in addition to the interval frequency.

5. Click Ok.

You can use the plotter in Vortex® Studio Editor to view data from each metric. In the toolbar, from the drop-down menu next to the plotter, click the metric to add to the plotter.

In order to output the data of a simulation, you must add a Metrics Manager and CSV Metrics Collector to your Setup file. Together, these two extensions work to keep a record of the metrics generated during a simulation. The Metrics Manager collects the data from all Metrics extensions found in your simulation, and the CSV Metric Collector saves that information to disk.

To output metric data:

1. In your Setup file's Toolbox, double-click Modules > Metrics Manager to add one.

   • Make sure Enable Data Collection is selected whenever you want to output data.

2. Again in your Setup file's Toolbox , double-click Application > CSV Metrics Collector.

3. Set the following fields:

   • Make sure the Output Enabled input is selected whenever you want to output data.

   • The Filename Prefix parameter sets the text that will appear at the start of every generated metrics output file.

   • Press the Browse button at the end of the Output Directory parameter to select the folder where the output files are saved.

   Additionally, the Generated Files output field displays the number of metrics files that have been created.