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Getting Started with STELLA® v 6.0

© MM High Performance Systems, Inc. The Systems Thinking Company TM http://www.hps-inc.com

Table of Contents
Welcome The Basics: A Tutorial for New Users Appendix: Basic Software Operations & Features
Rendering
Illustration 1: Depositing, Naming & Re-positioning Stocks, Converters and Nameplates Illustration 2: Hooking-up Flows Illustration 3:Re-positioning, “Bending” and Reversing Flows Illustration 4: Hooking-up and Re-positioning Connectors Illustration 5: Defining a Graphical Function 36 37 38 39 40 4 36

Simulating
Illustration 6: Creating a Graph or Table Pad Illustration 7: Defining a Graph or Table Pad Page 41 42

Communicating
Illustration 8: Using the Text Tool 43

© MM High Performance Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

2Welcome
Welcome to the STELLA® software “Getting Started” Tutorial! This tutorial provides an experiential introduction to the basic operations and features of the STELLA software for new users. The STELLA Electronic Help Files that accompany the software comprehensively describe software operation and features in much greater detail. The approach here is selective (not all features areillustrated), and context-rich. Through a case study involving deer population, you’ll progress through an organized series of diagrams that illustrate how to perform the basic operations and use the basic features of the software, associated with (1) rendering a mental model, (2) simulating the model to yield dynamic outputs, (3) analyzing the outputs to understand what’s causing them, and what youmight do to change them, and (4) communicating your understanding by making the insights derivable from the model available for “discovery” by others. This tutorial is designed for users of both the STELLA Basic and Research versions of the software. The Research version was used to develop this tutorial. Those owning the Basic version might see some slightly different screen shots than the onesappearing in the tutorial. Differences between the two versions will be identified as they arise. The Basics will take you about an hour to complete. The tutorial is divided into sections so that if you choose to “take a break” and return later to complete the tutorial, no problem. Have fun. Be cool (it would be hard not to, after mastering the basics of this software!). Stay systemic.

© MM HighPerformance Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

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The Basics: A Tutorial for New Users
The STELLA software is designed to increase the effectiveness of the set of processes by which we render, simulate, analyze and communicate our mental models. Mental models are those things we all necessarily carry around in our heads that help us to: (1) make meaning out of what we experience, (2) shareand evolve that meaning by communicating with others, and (3) evaluate and decide upon appropriate courses of action. As you can see, mental models are extremely important things. Learning to construct mental models that better reflect the reality they seek to mimic, and learning to simulate them more reliably, are vital to making your world, and our world, work more effectively. The aim of theSTELLA software is to accelerate and enrich these learning processes. The context for mastering the basics of the software will be the rendering, simulating, analyzing and communicating of a mental model of deer population dynamics. Since we are seeking to build your basic expertise as quickly as possible, we will keep the illustrative example simple. By the time you complete the tutorial, youshould see many ways that you might extend the example to capture more aspects of the deer population dynamics. Please feel free to do so! The approach we will take in this tutorial will be to show you a picture and then ask you to perform the software operations, or use the software features, needed to produce the picture. The operations themselves are illustrated using a progression of screen-shot...