Saving and loading models

Objective of the tutorial : To learn how to load and save models in GeNIe.
Estimated Time : 10 Minutes

At the end of the tutorial you will be able to:


Loading a file in GeNIe:

If you have gone through tutorial 4, you already know one way of loading a file in GeNIe. You used it to load the tutorial3.xdsl file.

There are 3 ways in which you can load a file in GeNIe,

Shown below is the Open option in File Menu.

The numbered list of files at the end of the File Menu are the Most Recently Used [ MRU ] file list. You can click on any of those filenames to open those files.

To open a file GeNIe will display the dialog box shown below:

The dialog box that appears allows you to choose a file to load.

GeNIe supports multiple file formats, and you can choose the format of your file by using the Files of type drop down list.

GeNIe 2.0 uses the XDSL file format, which is an enhanced version of the DSL file format used by GeNIe 1.0.

In addition to the DSL native format (*.dsl), GeNIe also supports the following file formats:

In order to see all the network files recognized by GeNIe in the directory, choose All Network Types.

In order to see all files in the directory, choose  All Files (*.*)  .

It is possible that a newly loaded network will have no layout information (i.e., positions of node centers).

In this case, use the Layout function of the View menu.

The function will propose a simple layout for your network.

Saving a file in GeNIe:

There are 3 ways in which you can save a file in GeNIe,

The difference between Save and Save As is that Save As lets you save the file under a different file name, so that you can keep your original file intact. Save option will save the changes in the original file. However if you are working on a new file, then both the options will ask for a filename using the following dialog box:

GeNIe can save in any of the file formats listed in the Loading files in GeNIe tutorial above. These can be selected from the Save as type drop down list.

 However only saving in the native GeNIe format will garuntee that all GeNIe-specific features are saved. There might be some loss of information while saving in the other formats.

If you want to have compatibility with GeNIe 1.0, then save the file as GeNIe 1.x ( *.dsl ) file type, by choosing it in the Save as type drop down list.

The reason why it was decided to implement all these formats is that we would like to stimulate exchange of models among various researchers. There are several valuable models available in various formats. Users of GeNIe can load these. Users of other programs can use GeNIe as a conversion program to their favorite format. We would like to warn the users that conversions between various formats lead in general to loss of information, as various formats may lack elements such as submodels, node colors, node size, etc. To prevent loss of information, we recommend the users of GeNIe to use its native format, which is in almost all cases a superset of other formats.


Next Tutorial:

Working in the Graph View.