There are several ways to access the Equation Editor.
Equation editor buttons
Select the Equation tool icon on the Sketch (top) toolbar(
); the cursor will change to show the fx icon. Clicking on a variable will open the editor.
Select the Equation tool on the Sketch toolbar. Clicking on a variable will open the editor.
Select the Equation tool on the analysis toolbar. This launches the editor immediately to edit the workbench variable.
With the sketch unlocked, right-click on a variable to display the Variable Options dialog and then select the Edit equation option.
When any sketch tool is selected, holding down the SHIFT and ALT keys and clicking on a variable will also open the Equation Editor.
Dialog Operations
When the Equation Editor is open, you will not be able to perform operations outside of the Equation Editor until you close it. If equations are created that are inconsistent with the sketch, Vensim will display a warning dialogue suggesting corrections.
Resizing the Equation Editor
You can resize the Equation Editor by dragging on the lower right-hand corner (though you cannot make is smaller than its initial size). This will change the size of the editing window for equations and can be useful if you have a big screen and a model with long equations. The size, position and layout of the equation editor is persistent across Vensim sessions.
Closing the Equation Editor
Whenever you close the Equation Editor, Vensim will try to make sense of what you have entered. If the model has problems, these will be marked, and whatever causal structure can be interpreted will be interpreted. In this manner it is always possible to do causal tracing, though for subscripted variables the accuracy of the causal tracing can be limited.
When you use the Equation Editor to make a change to the structure of the model Vensim will check to be sure that the sketch information for the model is also updated. If, for example you remove a feedback link, Vensim will remove that feedback link in any views it may have appeared. When you close the Equation Editor the Sketch Editor will sometimes flash because of this updating. This can happen independent of whether you launch the Equation Editor with a Sketch tool or by clicking on an Equation Editor tool on the Analysis toolset
