STELLA A Summer 2020 (You need to Watch the Stella A Video first, before you

work on this document) The video is a Panopto recording found at the following site:
https://kings.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=ddb105b7-9911-
49ab-a4d1-abbe01856aa4

You will notice that I capitalize certain words. This DOES NOT MEAN that you have to
type these words in Capitals. This is primarily for the benefit of the instructor so he does
lose his place during the Panopto Video.

1) A rectangle is a STOCK and represents anything that can accumulate such as people,
beer, bacteria, toxins, water, knowledge, or money.

2) Whenever you work with a STOCK, decide if it can become negative. Water in a lake
can not become negative, but money in a bank account can become negative

3) Make sure the EDIT mode is on, at the top of the screen. See the video on how to
create more room for your model.
A) Get a (non-negative) STOCK (From the top left of the screen) and move it onto the
screen.
B) Call it LAKE as seen below by typing in the area above the stock. This area will
appear as STOCK1 or STOCK2 until you click on it and change the name to one of your
choosing. You can change the font and font size by clicking on the text, then click on the
paint roller at the bottom right of the screen. Then go up to Text settings (on the upper
right) and choose the font style and size. You need large font sizes for any model you
submit to the instructor.

4) A) Click on the LAKE STOCK so that you can fill it with a certain amount of
something.
B) Since you will be filling it with water, click on the X2 on the bottom right of the
screen.
C) Then, just below LAKE= (above Units and below keypad)), type in the number 1000.
This now means that your lake has 1000 gallons of water in it. You still need to fill in the
units as gallons.
D) Just above the X2 is the Units for the stock. Click on the down arrow and select
“distance/area/volume”, then select “Gallons”. This now means that your lake has 1000
gallons of water in it. Finally, click the green check box on the bottom right.

6) Now lets let water flow into the lake. We will use a flow. A flow lets things get in and
out of a stock. It would let people, beer, bacteria, toxins, water, knowledge, or money
move into or out of a stock.
Select a flow (do not select a biflow) and place it on the screen to the left of the stock.
Move the flow arrow until it touches the stock and the stock changes color.
Give this flow the name of stream, by clicking on the text and changing to STREAM.
Click the paint roller to change the font style and size. It is a good practice to start all
stock names with an upper case letter (Lake) and use lower case letters to begin all other
names (stream).

lake
Table 1

stream

Graph 1

7) Click on the flow and select uniflow at the top right

Give it a value of 100. The units will show as gal/time, until you provide the time.
For now we will tell the model to run in hours and the units will change to gal/hour.
Make sure you are in EDIT model. Then click in the white area anywhere outside of your
model. Over to the right part of the screen you will see TIME UNITS. Type in HOURS
to set the flow as gallons/hour.
Now click on the stream flow. On the bottom right you should see Units as gallons/hours

8) Make sure time units are the same within a model.

If a flow in one part of your model is 60 gallons per minute
And the flow in another part of your model is 60 gallons per hour then you will not get
the correct response in your model. You could convert the 60 gallons per hour to 1 gallon
per minute and do the model in minutes.
Or you could convert the 60 gallons per minute to 3600 gallons per hour and do the
model in hours.

9) You need to tell Stella some more information about your model.
Click on the white space outside your model.
You would set the “sim duration” to 0 to achieve maximum speed, but for now set the
“sim duration” at 1.5. (in seconds).
This slows down the model to take 1.5 seconds to run.
Next fill in the start time and stop time. You are already running the model in hours.
If you set the start time to 0 and the stop time to 100, then the model will run for 100
hours.
This means the simulation would run for 100 cycles of whatever time period you
selected. (in this case hours).
If you are running in years then a very good thing to try is to use the actual dates
For example start time 2020
Stop time 2030
This would run the model from the year 2020 to the year 2030 which would be 10 cycles
in years, as long as you changed the time units to years.
For this model, select FROM 0 and TO 100 and keep the time units in hours.
10) Stay in model settings. You must now choose a DT. This is the fraction of each cycle
that Stella will calculate the values in your model.
Lets say that your cycles are minutes.
Then a DT set to 1 will calculate your model values at 1 minute, then 2 minutes, then at 3
minutes.
A DT set to 0.5 will calculate your model values at 0.5 minutes, then again at 1 minute,
then again at 1.5 minutes, then again at 2 minutes
A DT set to 0.25 will calculate at 0.25 min, then 0.5 min, then 0.75 min, then 1 min etc

In general, the smaller the DT the more accurate the model, but the slower it runs.
Make sure that the DT makes sense. If you are modeling deer births and your model is in
years then a DT of 0.25 would give you some births in the Fall, Winter, Spring, and
Summer. A deer giving birth four times a year makes no biological sense and you should
choose a DT of 1 for this situation. But, you could be modeling an animal (like a rabbit)
that could give birth four times a year. In this case, a DT of 0.25 would be appropriate.
For many models , a DT of 0.25 is a good compromise between accuracy and speed.
Set the DT to 1.0 for today so the models run quickly.
The smaller the DT, the more calculations have to be done, and the slower the model
runs.

11) We need to see the results of the model.

Select the GRAPH PAD icon and drag it onto the screen
DOUBLE CLICK it to be able to input what to graph
On the right find SERIES LIST and click the green button
Click on the variable you want to graph.
In this case click on LAKE
Go down to LEGEND TITLE and type in LAKE GALLONS
Leave Min Y Value as is
Change Max Y value to 15000

Although you can graph two variables on one graph, lets first practice with another graph
for the STREAM FLOW

Select the GRAPH PAD icon again and drag it onto the screen
DOUBLE CLICK it to be able to input what to graph
On the right find SERIES LISTand click the green button
Click on the variable you want to graph.
In this case click on STREAM
Go down to LEGEND TITLE and type in STREAM FLOW
Leave Min Y Value as is
Change Max Y value to 200

12) Run the model by going to the bottom left of the screen and clicking on the arrow.
You should see a small graph appear within the lake stock icon. In addition, you should
see the two larger graphs that you created. Note that the lake continues to fill while the
stream flow is constant.
13) Lets use Stella’s ability to give you accurate tables.
Click on table and place it on the screen
DOUBLE CLICK it to be able to input what goes in the table
Look at ITEM LIST on the right of the screen
Click the green + BUTTON and select LAKE and STREAM from the pop-up window
Go to TITLE and type in LAKE AND STREAM GALLONS.
If you have run the model already, the values will already be in the table you created. If
you have not run, the model, click the run arrow and the table will fill with the values.
Scroll down the table to see all the values for the 100 hour run.

14) Practice graphing two variables on one graph

Minimize the two graphs and table you already have, by clicking on the tiny arrow in the
upper left hand corner of each graph and table
Select the graph icon and place it in an available spot
Double click the graph
Go to the series list and click on the GREEN + BUTTON
Select LAKE and STREAM as variables
Both lake and stream should appear in the series list
Click on LAKE in the series list
Set the min Y value to 0
Set the max Y value to 15000
Click on STREAM in the series list
Set the min Y value to 0
Set the max Y value to 200
Click on the “right axis” box
Now the LEFT Y axis will apply to the LAKE while the RIGHT Y axis will apply to the
STREAM

15) Always run models for different lengths of time because a model may change
behavior later in the run. In the model we are working on, there will be no change in
behavior, if you increase the number of cycles. But you need to test this for yourself.
Click on the white area of the model, while the X2 is visible and you are in EDIT mode.
Then go to RUN SPECS to set the time FROM 0 TO 200
Now run the model and see if the two variable graph is any different for the longer time
frame.
You have now created a problem that you need to be aware of. Look at the Max Y value
that you have set to 15000 for “lake”. To the right of this, you see the actual Y value is
21000. Your graph is therefore not showing you all the data. You need to change your
Max Y value to 25000. Do so, and run the model again. Now your graph shows all the
data.

16) Save the model you have been working on, then click on FILE and NEW MODEL

lake 2
lake 1

stream1

Create the above model (with time in hours)

Place 10,000 gallons of water in lake 2 (Do not enter 10,000 with the comma)
Place 1000 gallons of water in lake 1
Have the stream flow be 100 gallons per hour
Make a new graph and table with new names
Run the simulation and see how long it takes to fill up lake 1 and empty lake 2
Always run simulations long enough to see a result. If you only ran the simulation for 10
hours, the lake would not fill up. Choose a time much longer than you think will be
necessary

15) A more complex problem

reservoir new reservoir

flow
spring

evap

Set the time to “Days”

This reservoir needs 106 gallons of water. You do this by typing in 1E6.
The new reservoir has no water and is a valley with animals
The animals will drown unless you fill the reservoir slowly
The EPA says you need to take 100 days to fill this new reservoir so that the animals
have enough time to walk to safety
Have a flow out of the newnreservoir to represent water evaporating at the rate of 100
gallons per day
Have a spring also feeding the new reservoir at the rate of 10 gallons per day
Figure out the flow needed to fill the new reservoir to its capacity of 100,000 gallons in
100 days
You need to test different flows for a time period of 100 days and see which flows will
get you the 100,000 gallons into the new reservoir in that time period.
Use a graph and table to watch the effects of your flow rates.
The easiest way to change flow rates is by using pointer to turn the flow higher or lower.
The video will demonstrate how to do this.