The purpose of the research described herein is to prototype a software system that aids a simulationist in developing a general purpose discrete event simulation model.

A literature review has shown the need for an integrated visual simulation system that provides for the graphical definition and interactive specification of the model while maintaining application independence. The General Purpose Visual Simulation System (GPVSS) prototyped in this research meets this need by assisting a simulationist to: (1) graphically design the model and its M visualization, (2) interactively specify the model's logic, and (3) automatically generate the executable version of the model, while maintaining domain independence. GPVSS is prototyped on a Sun 3/160C computer workstation using the SunView graphical interface. It consists of over 11,000 lines of documented code. GPVSS has been successfully tested in three different case studies that are described in this work.