Building a process requires putting together all the processing steps that are necessary to carry out the full recipe. Each such process step is depicted on the workspace of SuperPro Designer’s process flowsheet as an icon or more precisely a unit procedure icon (see What Is a Unit Procedure?). The icon stands for a set of one or more elementary transformations (unit operations) (see What Is a Unit Operation?) that are presumed to take place inside the same hosting equipment resource. Material is supposed to flow from one procedure to another via process streams. Sometimes material enters a process as a direct input to a unit procedure; sometimes material exits the process as a direct output from a a unit procedure.
As mentioned in Batch vs. Continuous Procedures, SuperPro Designer can be used to simulate batch, continuous as well as mixed mode processes (partly batch, partly continuous). The intelligent behavior of unit procedures as simulation agents in a continuous or batch mode environment is a unique aspect of SuperPro Designer as a simulation engine and it is what makes this software unique amongst other simulation tools.