While the Model Workspace and Data Workspace are key to creating the mechanics of a Silico simulation, another key aspect is presenting that simulation, and enabling experimentation. This is handled by the Dashboard Workspace area of the application, which allows you to create dashboards inside your project using interactive presentational widgets.

Creating a Dashboard

An empty dashboard area, with the New Dashboard button highlighted

From within any project, you can access the Dashboard Builder from the left hand icons. Once there, you can create one or more dashboards, all linked into the same project.

Dashboards can be renamed using the triple-dot menu when hovering in the list, and re-ordered by clicking and dragging them within that list.

Adding and Configuring Widgets

Once you have the dashboard, you can use the Widgets buttons in the sidebar below to create widgets. You can add any number of widgets to a dashboard, and can resize them by dragging the bottom-right corner of a widget, or move by clicking and dragging on the widget itself.

When you add a widget for the first time, you can configure it initially through the display of the widget itself. Once you've configured a widget, you can access full configuration through the Settings icon in the top right of a widget, shown on hover. This is also where you can delete widgets.

Widget Types

Value Widgets

Value widgets let you display the value of core simulation element (Stocks, Flows, Variables).

The initial configuration of a Value Widget, choosing which element value to display

Chart Widgets

Much like Chart elements, the Chart widget allows you to choose some element(s) from within your project to display inside a larger chart.

Text Widgets

Text widgets allow you to place formatted text into your dashboard. This can be used to provide useful explanations or instructions to go along with your data display, such as the interesting parameters or behaviours.

Input Widgets

Input widgets enable changing parameters of your simulation while remaining in the dashboard. Any changes made in the input widget are temporary, and don't affect your project.

Configuring an input widget

When configuring an input widget, there are 3 main aspects to configure:

• The elements to use as inputs. These must be variables, flows, and stocks, although using a stock as an input should be done rarely, as it will no longer be affected by connected flows. If you want to configure the initial value of a stock through an input then you should use a separate variable to hold the initial value of the stock, and refer to that from the stock.
• The range of each input, as a min, max, and step. The step sets the step between valid values, e.g. min 10, max 50, step 5, would allow values of 10, 15, 20...
• Whether to show as a slider or as a text input. By default inputs are shown as slider controls, but you can opt to show just as a text input if preferred. Note the constraints set above still apply to text inputs.

Inactive and Active Inputs

Once you've configured an input, by default it won't affect the simulation, and will instead report the current value of the connected element (even if that might be outside of the constraints specified by the input). To activate an input, you can either make a change to its value, or click the toggle to the left of the input. Clicking the toggle off will deactivate the input, and return it to showing the current value.

A configured input widget, with 'Tap' active and 'Bathtub' inactive.