01-02-2011, 05:36 AM
Well here is the latest information on my experimenting with ShipIt.
Now that I figured out what I'd done wrong (one of those Oops! moments)
here is how ShipIt is working for me now:
1. Fresh Start
Placed 16 cars (1 at each spot) on spur
Remainder of cars in yard
2. Session 1
2 cars inbound from yard
5 cars outbound from spur
Session 2
4 cars inbound from yard
5 cars outbound from spur
Session 3
5 cars inbound from yard
5 cars outbound from spur
All remaining switch list generation produced same results:
5 cars inbound from yard and 5 cars outbound from spur
Since I have train length limited to 5 cars - this behavior is correct and is working just the way I want. Although I haven't figured out an easy way to keep track of the movement of individual cars - based on the number of switch lists I've generated, it does appear that all cars are moving.
Only thing that is bothering me at the moment is that I don't really want every car spot filled all the time. For instance, my distribution warehouse has 6 car spots. ShipIt has a car spotted at each door all the time and I'd prefer that there only be 2 or 3 cars on spot at any one time. Same with my food products industry that has 5 car spots. I should be able to fix this issue by adjusting the frequency of car movements for various spots. Will experiment with that.
I added a second switch job to the train list, to see how that effected operations. I have a first shift job and a third shift job and here are some results for doing that:
Session 1
First Shift
5 cars inbound from yard
5 cars outbound from spur
Third Shift
1 car inbound from yard
5 cars outbound from spur
Session 2
First Shift
5 cars inbound from yard
5 cars outbound from spur
Third Shift
5 cars inbound from yard
5 cars outbound from spur
This pattern continued for every session generated - good!
ShipIt allows you to have several trains scheduled, but not actually run them. Thus I can have three yard crews on the train list, but only generate switch lists for one of them if I only want to have one session at a time. Nice feature.
Overall, at this point I'm really being to like using ShipIt. Will have to say that I don't like the output of the switch lists. The primary switch list form wastes a lot of paper - typically printing out as many as two pages for one train. would be a lot more pages if my train lengths weren't limited. Here's an example:
It does have a Condensed switch list that uses abbreviations and looks like this:
A bit more prototypical in appearance.
One other note while I'm thinking about it. I find that ShipIt has a tendency to crash frequently. No pattern to the crashes and sometimes it will crash by simply moving a scrollbar on an open window. It has crashed once when I did a Fresh Start and once when generating a session. Crashes do not seem to effect anything as far as the database goes and restarting the program, I've been able to resume from where the point where it crashed.
Now that I figured out what I'd done wrong (one of those Oops! moments)
here is how ShipIt is working for me now:1. Fresh Start
Placed 16 cars (1 at each spot) on spur
Remainder of cars in yard
2. Session 1
2 cars inbound from yard
5 cars outbound from spur
Session 2
4 cars inbound from yard
5 cars outbound from spur
Session 3
5 cars inbound from yard
5 cars outbound from spur
All remaining switch list generation produced same results:
5 cars inbound from yard and 5 cars outbound from spur
Since I have train length limited to 5 cars - this behavior is correct and is working just the way I want. Although I haven't figured out an easy way to keep track of the movement of individual cars - based on the number of switch lists I've generated, it does appear that all cars are moving.
Only thing that is bothering me at the moment is that I don't really want every car spot filled all the time. For instance, my distribution warehouse has 6 car spots. ShipIt has a car spotted at each door all the time and I'd prefer that there only be 2 or 3 cars on spot at any one time. Same with my food products industry that has 5 car spots. I should be able to fix this issue by adjusting the frequency of car movements for various spots. Will experiment with that.
I added a second switch job to the train list, to see how that effected operations. I have a first shift job and a third shift job and here are some results for doing that:
Session 1
First Shift
5 cars inbound from yard
5 cars outbound from spur
Third Shift
1 car inbound from yard
5 cars outbound from spur
Session 2
First Shift
5 cars inbound from yard
5 cars outbound from spur
Third Shift
5 cars inbound from yard
5 cars outbound from spur
This pattern continued for every session generated - good!
ShipIt allows you to have several trains scheduled, but not actually run them. Thus I can have three yard crews on the train list, but only generate switch lists for one of them if I only want to have one session at a time. Nice feature.
Overall, at this point I'm really being to like using ShipIt. Will have to say that I don't like the output of the switch lists. The primary switch list form wastes a lot of paper - typically printing out as many as two pages for one train. would be a lot more pages if my train lengths weren't limited. Here's an example:
One other note while I'm thinking about it. I find that ShipIt has a tendency to crash frequently. No pattern to the crashes and sometimes it will crash by simply moving a scrollbar on an open window. It has crashed once when I did a Fresh Start and once when generating a session. Crashes do not seem to effect anything as far as the database goes and restarting the program, I've been able to resume from where the point where it crashed.
Ed
"Friends don't let friends build Timesavers"
"Friends don't let friends build Timesavers"