All existing examples of using Microsoft Excel as an interface to SimSinter do not work

[kbuma]

None of the provided examples of using Microsoft Excel as an interface to SimSinter load and run properly in Microsoft Excel 2021. The example files for driving Aspen Custom Modeler and Aspen Plus are considered to be corrupt and performing recovery on them removes all VBA code in them.
The example file for driving Excel fails with a "Class not registered" error.

Need to decide whether to retain support for using Excel as an interface or not.

[ksbeattie]

@jmorgan29 & @MAZamarripa do either of you know who might be using SimSinter and Excel together?

[ksbeattie]

@jmorgan29 & @MAZamarripa do either of you know who might be using SimSinter and Excel together?

If this is a feature that people are using and we should support it, then we should get some examples/tests that work, otherwise we should drop support for it.

[ksbeattie]

A similar question, about ConsoleSinter is here: #48

[jmorgan29]

@ksbeattie, I am still able to work with the Excel-FOQUS interface using SimSinter 2.1.0.1. Is this issue specific for newer versions of SimSinter? I do recommend keeping support for the Excel-FOQUS interface as there are some useful applications. For example, we had a project in which we were tasked with interfacing FOQUS with a commercial process simulator (ProTreat) and found that it was relatively straightforward to accomplish this through use of Excel as an intermediate.

[kbuma]

@jmorgan29 what versions of Windows and Excel are these successfully running on? How did you implement the integration in Excel for this project?
When I've tried to run the examples bundled with SimSinter that used Excel to drive simulations, the recent versions of Excel would not allow them to execute due to their use of VBA for the implementation.

[ksbeattie]

@jmorgan29 any update on this?

[ksbeattie]

@kbuma, @jmorgan29 says he's running Windows 10 and Excel 2021 (perhaps older, he's going to check and update here).

[ksbeattie]

@jmorgan29 did you get a chance to look if those are indeed the versions you were working with? It would be nice to, at the very least, identify the versions of the software that were known to work.

[jmorgan29]

@ksbeattie, I have used those versions for testing the general capability of working with an Excel spreadsheet in FOQUS. I also mentioned a project in which CCSI2 is supporting the use of a commercial process simulator (ProTreat) in FOQUS with an Excel intermediate. For this project, I am using Windows 10 and Microsoft Excel 2019. If it would be useful, I could demonstrate the set-up/capability in an upcoming software development meeting.

[kbuma]

@jmorgan29 thanks for the additional details - that's very useful. It would be great if you could demonstrate the set-up in an upcoming software development meeting. Is there one coming up that you'd be available for?

[jmorgan29]

@kbuma, is this the regularly scheduled Toolset and dev call meeting on Tuesday? If so, I will plan to attend the meeting on 5/28. Since I will only be able to attend the first half of this meeting, I will also be available on 6/4 if more time is needed.

[kbuma]

@jmorgan29 that sounds great - see you on 5/28 at the regularly schedule dev call

[kbuma]

Based on the conversation at the 5/28 meeting we decided to continue support for Excel. The desire is to keep it as a way to integrate with other environments that we do not support directly in our toolchain, e.g. ProTreat.

Thus, we will focus on getting the example that uses Excel to perform a simple Body Mass Index calculation working. That example tests 1) executing a VBA macro on the spreadsheet and 2) moving data to/from the spreadsheet.

[kbuma]

The good news is that the Sinter Excel integration still works. However, I am still figuring out how to get the installer updated so that the COM interfaces are properly registered for it to work.

I used the instructions for Microsoft Excel under https://simsinter.readthedocs.io/en/latest/manual/tutorials.html#setting-up-microsoft-excel-simsinter to try and run the BMI calculation as an Excel sim.

New Excel versions block macros so I had to enable them by (this is something we will need to add to the documentation for users that want to utilize this feature):

1. Go to File > Options > Trust Center > Trust Center Settings > Macro Settings.
2. Select "Enable all macros"

The next issue is that the Sinter COM interface could not be loaded as the installer is not properly registering it in the Windows Registry (I'm still trying to figure out).

I was able to register the Sinter COM interface properly by enabling the "Register for COM Integration" option in the Sinter project in Visual Studio - this registers it as part of the build process.

Using the version registered by Visual Studio I was able to run the BMI simulation successfully in Excel.

Pending work: figure out how to configure Wix so that the installer properly registers the Sinter COM interface.

[kbuma]

Have a version of the installer that I believe registers the Sinter COM interface properly.

Next step is to to test and verify this on a clean system in case there were any side-effects that I missed cleaning up from the Visual Studio build process registration.

[kbuma]

Installer did not work on a clean system. This means that it was working on the dev machine due to a side-effect from the Visual Studio build process registration.

Back to the drawing board...