SimPy + Tkinter Boilerplate

This boilerplate project demonstrates the use of Tkinter for real-time visualization of discrete event simulations with SimPy.

Examples

The following code snippet shows the basic structure of the simulation program. The simulation itself is executed in a separate simulation thread, while the GUI uses the main thread.

import threading
import tkinter
import simpy
import simpy.rt

# define the simulation ticks per second
ticks_per_second = 30
# define the total duration of the simulation run
duration = 10 * ticks_per_second

# create Tkinter common objects here
window = tkinter.Tk()

def run():
    env = simpy.rt.RealtimeEnvironment(factor=1/ticks_per_second, strict=False)
    # define SimPy events here
    # create SimPy resources here
    # attach SimPy processes here
    env.run(until=duration)

# run SimPy simulation event processing in simulation thread
thread = threading.Thread(target=run)
thread.start()

# run Tkinter interaction event processing and component rendering in main thread
window.mainloop()

Screenshots

When executing the simulation program, you should see the following real-time visualization.

Guides

Prepare the development environment

Download and install the SimPy discrete event simulation library.

pip install simpy

Run the simulation program

Execute the simulation program with your standard Python interpreter.

python ./sources/main.py