After installing GoldSim
The Introduction to GoldSim course is an excellent resource to learn how to use GoldSim. It contains many examples and exercises and covers the basic and advanced tools of GoldSim.
I would recommend at least doing the first four lessons before starting your projects.
Working on your own project: some tips
Before starting your own model in GoldSim, think about these questions:
- What is your hypothesis for this model?
- Do you need to do this? Has anyone done this before you? Ask or look at the literature.
- What are the requirements (i.e., expected inputs and outputs)? Are they reasonable and realistic?
- Before starting your model, sketch a diagram of what your model should do. Cybernetic diagrams or tables can be useful.
- Are the requirements still consistent with your cybernetic diagram or table? Modify them if they are not.
- In most cases your model will need parameters or data elements to work. Can you get their values from an experiment or the literature?
- What is a reasonable deadline to have the first version of the model, and what can you realistically do before that deadline? (remember that coding usually takes longer than expected)
- Write an initial version of your model in paper (pseudo-code)
- Do a minimal version of the model that you can test.
- Test that version and verify it works.
- Start documenting your model and doing version control. Use a GitHub repository or other platform.
- You never finish a model: you just do another iteration of it.