Error Output Window
Every user’s dream is to complete a simulation within a few minutes by adding their components of choice, inserting the procedures and operations necessary to represent their process, connect them with streams, initialize the operations and the input streams, click on the Solve M&E button (
) and be done! Unfortunately, this seldom happens in real life. Users often make mistakes on several levels: they forget to include necessary streams, they neglect to initialize all the operations; they provide initialization conditions that lead to infeasible results, etc. Fortunately, the application performs hundreds of checks to make sure that all the pieces are structurally in place before the mass & energy (M&E) balances (or any other action for that matter) can be solved. After the calculations finish, another set of checks is performed to make sure the results are in valid ranges and that the user specifications are realistic (e.g., a heating, as opposed to cooling agent, was selected for a heating operation). Possible issues that may be encountered at any of these levels, are communicated to the user through the ‘Error Output Window’ (see The error output window.)..
The error output window.
The error output window is initially hidden, since there’s nothing to be displayed. As soon as the application wants to echo a message, the error window shows as a separate tab (‘Errors’) on the same toolbar that the stream summary table appears. Since there may be more than one messages that are detected, the window may present multiple lines, each one corresponding to an individual message. Notice that the messages are displayed on a grid that has four columns:
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1st Column
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Severity Level Indicator
 Internal Warning and  Internal Error:
A problem was encountered during the solution of M&E balances that is not severe enough by its own and is not ,typically, of interest to the user (e.g., the bubble/dew point of a mixture could not be calculated for some reason).
 Informative Only: simply an informative message about an observation or an action that was taken on the user’s behalf.
 Warning: an unexpected value or situation was encountered; the original command concluded but the validity of the results may be questionable. It is up to the user’s discretion as to whether the warning warrants further investigation or it can be safely ignored.
 Non-Severe Error: An error was encountered but the application managed to bypass it and continue on with the original command. The circumstances reported by the application need to be addressed otherwise the results may be (at least partly) incorrect or incomplete.
 Severe Error: An abnormal situation was encountered that prevented the application from concluding the original command issued (e.g. show a graph, or do the M&E balance calculations, etc.) The user’s attention is needed before any progress can be made on this issue.
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2nd Column
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A short descriptor will be shown that indicates the source of the warning/error. For example, the displayed text could be the name of a stream, unit procedure, operation, equipment resource, etc. or it could simply be ‘process’ or ‘RepEng’ (for reporting engine), or ‘SimEng’ (for simulation engine) etc. The tooltip displayed when the mouse is over the column may display a more detailed description of the error/warning source.
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3rd Column
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The error/warning message’s text is displayed as a single line string in this column. Typically, the string will have two parts: the first part is a message ID in the form of: E***** (for errors) or W***** (for warnings). This ID makes it easy to convey the message to our technical support engineers should the situation persists and the user is unable to circumvent the issue without help. The rest of the message, is a verbal (short) description of the situation encountered. As space may not allow, the entire text may not be visible in the 2nd column. If that’s the case, the message is shortened and ellipsis will be shown at the end of the displayed text. If you move your mouse over the text, the message in its entirety will be displayed as a tooltip.
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4th Column
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 If you see this button at the end of the message, it implies that a specific topic for this message exists in the help system of the application. Clicking on this button, will fire up the help engine (if it’s not already running) and present information about this topic. Sometimes more explanation is presented in this context as well as tips on how to resolve the issue (along with links to related topics in the help system).
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The error output window can be shown or hidden by clicking on the Toggle the Error Output Window button (
). When the tab is showing you can also right-click over the window and select from its command menu.
The error output contents are automatically cleared before a new command (that may generate messages) is issued. If you wish to clear its contents manually, you can select from the window’s command menu. You may also print the contents of the window by selecting the command from the context menu.
Filtering Notification Messages
It is possible to filter the messages displayed by the program in one of the following ways:
1. By the Severity Level
By default, the application will allow all messages with the severity level of ‘Informative Only’ and above to be echoed and therefore be visible to the user. This includes all possible messages except the ‘Internal Errors’ and ‘Internal Warnings’. To modify the severity level threshold of displayed messages select from the command menu of the error output window (see Error / Warning Output Filter Threshold Dialog). The ‘Internal Warning’ or ‘Internal Error’ messages may offer additional insight on an unexpected behavior of the calculation engine that triggered other ‘Non-Severe Errors’ or ‘Warnings’ and it is recommended that when such errors or warnings are generated to (temporarily) lower the threshold level (perhaps to ‘All Messages’) in order to be able to view them.
2. By the Message ID
After the execution of the mass and energy balances it is possible that the program generates a set of messages from different operations that have the same ID. If you desire, you can specify that the specific messages should not be displayed by right-clicking on any one of them on the error pane and selecting . By doing so, you essentially hide all current (and future) messages with that ID from being displayed. Once created, the error/warning list can be modified by selecting from the error output window’s command menu. Alternatively, you can empty all the contents of the list by selecting from the command menu of the error output window.