Why are agents not following attractors

Question

So, I have a model where I want to insert a number of service stations to handle incoming aircrafts. "Main" looks like this:

In the properties of the serviceStations population I have set the "inital location" to "in the node" (the node surrounding the attractors). And the parameter "numberOfServiceStations" holds an integer of 6 in order to decide the initial number of agents.

However, when I run the model, the agents gets randomly scattered like so:

Is there a way to arrange the service station agents according to the attractors?

Answer 1

True, this does not work directly. You can force your agents to use attractors using a small trick:

1. Create and Enter and Exit flow chart as below, make it accept your agent type:
2. Ensure to setup the Enter block as above on the "New Location" and "Node"
3. The initial position in the agent population can stay at the default setting as below:
4. In the "on startup" code of the agent type, send them through the Enter block:

NOTE: Attractors work randomly and have no concept of being "full". You could see 100 agents on top of each other on 1 attractor.