How to set Model Start Time from Excel?

Dear all, is it possible to set the Model Start Time from an Excel's table? I know how to import data from Excel, I usually do this. But I'd like to know if I can set the Model Start Time from an imported data.

Actually I want to change also the Finish Time from the same Excel's input. Is it possible? How?

Best Regards.

Mauricio

Hi Mauricio
I am very interested in your question.
Due to the different timing patterns of regular time and computer system ,It's inconvenient to set the Model Start or Stop Time from an Excel's table.

So I tried to make a user command to make it easy to do.
In the model attached, you can use the command set_time() to set the start or stop time. The first six parameters are yyyy/MM/dd/hh/mm/ss (u can see the example in the discribe), and the last parameter decide you want to set the start time or the stop time.

The core command is applicationcommand("convertunixtime", tonum(Node), Time);

You can read the date information from different cells in excel as the parameters of "set_time"

Any suggestions would be appreciated?

Excel datetimes are OADatetime doubles when imported to FlexSim 7.5 (if you choose numeric rather than automatic data distinction, or if you go through a DB) (Matt mentioned this changing for 7.7 next beta to automatically create unixdatetimes).

Try this:

#define UNIXSECSB4OADATETIME 9435312000.0
double unixstart=oastart*days(1)+UNIXSECSB4OADATETIME;
treenode startNode = tonode(getmodelunitnum(START_TIME_NODE));
set(startNode, unixstart);
applicationcommand("convertunixtime", tonum(startNode), unixstart);

Thank you guys for this assistance.
I used Jing's method and it's working greatly!


Regards.

Mauricio