20. Tools and Functions for Complex Trees

Many of the modeling exercises and examples in this manual are based on simple, small trees. The trees required in your own projects may be much more complex, perhaps including hundreds of variables, thousands of nodes, scores of distributions, etc. (Which is not to suggest that a bigger model is a better model, generally.)

This chapter focuses on a number of features in TreeAge Pro that can be indispensable aids to both building and reviewing large and/or complex trees.

The additional productivity features relevant to complex modeling projects include:

• Use the Explorer View and Model Overview for navigation

• View/edit the tree document's XML

• Clone subtrees (rather than copying/pasting)

• Creating user-defined functions with Python

• Link calculations to other trees/subtrees

• Using special functions to perform specialized tasks automatically during calculations (e.g., run a macro, enable debugging, or export the Global matrix)