Documentation

Electronic  Documentation

The complete documentation for Vensim is available electronically from within Vensim using the menu command Help>Vensim Manuals.  On the Macintosh it is available as html files.  The documentation can also be viewed from our website directly (this is a little slow to open).

Installation

Read Me Notes

User's Guide

The User's Guide can be ordered from us and is also available as an Adobe Acrobat file for easier reading or to print.

Either open or save this zip file and then save the acrobat file to your computer.  The User's Guide is a little over two megabytes so it may take some time to download.  By presenting it as a .zip file you will not have to wait for Adobe Acrobat to open and it will prevent you from having to download it twice which often happens.  If you do save the .zip file you will need to extract the .pdf file to view it. If you do not have an Acrobat reader (which will allow you to view and print this file) it is available free for both Windows and the Macintosh from http://www.adobe.com. 

Reference Manual, Modeling Guide and DSS Reference Supplement

These manuals are included in the online documentation.  We do not print these manuals, but for those who prefer the traditional manual format they are available as Adobe Acrobat documents.  The formatting on these documents is much rougher than it is for the User's Guide, but they do contain a table of contents and index and are quite serviceable, if not elegant:

 Either open or save these zip files and then save the acrobat file to your computer.  The files are relatively large (from one to three megabytes) so they may take some time to download.  By presenting them as a .zip files you will not have to wait for Adobe Acrobat to open and it will prevent you from having to download it twice which often happens.  If you do save the .zip file you will need to extract the .pdf file to view it.

Spanish and Portuguese Documentation

Part of the User's Guide has been translated into Spanish. A tutorial including elements of the User's Guide, the Short PLE tutorial by Craig Kirkwood and other material is available in Portuguese.

PLE Short Tutorial

Professor Craig Kirkwood at Arizona State University has a System Dynamics Resource page which includes an excellent short tutorial for Vensim PLE in Adobe Acrobat format. 

Molecules