Compatibility Issues

VCell is designed to make upgrades and the introduction of new features a seamless process for the users. Nevertheless, after we made available a public beta version of VCell, compatibility issues can arise if a user switches between the 2 deployed versions ("release" and "beta"). As has been the case before, the newest version of VCell (4.2) retains full backward compatibility with all BioModels or MathModels created in previous versions of VCell. However, since parameter scans are new specifications that are saved as part of the model itself, there is no forward compatibility possible. This means that if a BioModel or MathModel is created with VCell 4.2 (currently the beta version) *and* it contains at least one simulation with a parameter scan, further work on the model (loading, editing, viewing) can only be done using this or later versions of VCell.

Upcoming Changes

Currently the data viewing and export options for parameter scan simulations is fairly basic, but it will be enhanced very soon. A few additional capabilities under consideration for the parameter scan data viewer are: allowing multiple data windows per simulation, viewing several datasets in the same window in a tiled format, overlaying results from different datasets on the same graph (compartmental simulations only). Please send us feedback about what you think would be the most useful/practical ways to view the multiple datasets of a parameter scan simulation.

Quota Issues

We are also reviewing the current quota limitations for submitting parameter scan simulations (it is very easy to submit scans that result in hundreds of simulation jobs). Please let us know what you believe a typical usage of parameter scans would be (number of parameters/combination of values per scan), for both compartmental and spatial simulations.