Beginning Your First Model

When you start DecisionPro, a blank document is automatically created and maximized to occupy the entire client area in the application window. This document contains one blank tree sheet. You add new sheets to your document by pointing to Sheet in the Insert menu, and clicking the appropriate option.

The document window contains a toolbar across the top. Below that is the Formula Bar followed by the Tree Display Area and the Sheet Tabs.

A text cursor is initially placed in the Formula Bar waiting for you to enter the root, or top-level, node definition in your model. For example, if you enter the definition

ROE:=Profit/Equity

DecisionPro will immediately display this tree:

The nodes Profit and Equity have no box around them, which indicates that they are not yet defined.

Next, if you click on the node Profit and type

Profit:=PBT-Tax

DecisionPro will update the tree to look like this:

You continue this process until all nodes are defined. Then, press F9 or click the Recalculate toolbar button to calculate a solution.

By default, each node in a tree displays its name (top) and calculated value (bottom). You can choose to display any combination of Comment, Node name, Definition, Equation, and Calculated value.

You can determine which items are displayed in a node by selecting the node and clicking the appropriate options in Node Contents toolbar or by clicking the Node Properties tool . You can customize how calculated values are displayed by clicking the appropriate options in the Number Format toolbar group .

Once you have completed a model in the form of a DecisionPro tree, you can use it to perform a variety of analyses with built-in tools such as the Scenario Manager, Goal Seek, Solver, Decision Tree, Monte Carlo Simulation, Tabulating, and Graphing tools. Many of these tools automatically add new sheets to your document.