Vensim Assignment One - 810:025 Fall 2009
System Dynamics Modeling

Assigned on Monday, March 21st, 2011
Due on Wednesday, March 30th, 2011



  1. Assignment One was handed out on September 10th. Here is most of what you received on the two page handout that day. September10thBirthsDeathsVensim.pdf does not include SOME of the highlights from Chapter 02 of the 2nd edition of Andrew Ford's Modeling the Environment textbook.
  2. This assignment assumes that you have read Chapter 02: Software (preview draft) Getting Started with Stella and Vensim, which is from the 2nd edition of Andrew Ford book.
  3. Thursday, September 17th email note about the Vensim assignment is worth rereading.
  4. If you are having trouble, here is the very same online Vensim modeling tutorial that I took you through during the hands-on classes. It should seem very familiar to everyone, since we have had perfect attendance in 810:025 for 8 classes and 4 weeks. Thank you!

    The tutorial uses exactly the same example we went through in class and teaches you how do everything I have shown you how to do in Vensim. System Dynamics Tool - Vensim PLE Tutorial 1.

  5. VENSIM Software : Download the Ventana Vensim PLE (Personal Learning Edition) software - which is free if used for educational purposes.
  6. See the Vensim Control Panel, the Sketch pad diagram structure of a Vensim model from the tutorial, and a Vensim Table all in one screen snapshot. Unconstrained Growth example from class and directly from the online tutorial.
  7. Send me your mdl (the .mdl extension is the suffix that Ventana Vensim places on Vensim file. The .mdl suffix/extension is probably taken from the word MoDeL when you remove the vowels. Send it (your .mdl Ventana model file) as an attachment in an email to jacobson@cs.uni.edu to submit your assignment.

    You can also send an attachment of the GRAPH and of the TABLE, that you have inserted (Copied and Pasted as shown in class) into a Microsoft Word document. If you have trouble with that, just print out the TABLE and the GRAPH or see me before or after class for help on that part.

    Your graph and table will be of the births, deaths, and population. The TABLE does not have to include ALL of the rows. Just the first 5 or 10 rows and the last 5 or 10 rows would be enough. It should be clear from the assignment handout, which shows what my graph and my table looked like.