The detail panels from the Inventory Editor.

Purchasing Data
Purchasing data is used to specify various attributes that can help calculate the costs of your shows, as well as maintain your inventory stock counts.

Description- this is a custom description that you can enter for your effect.  In many cases the effect category combined with the effect name will give you a good description of the effect, but additional details can be included here if desired.  This field will also be filled with a description when you import data from the inventory database of another program, which will help you assign the correct simulator effect to represent the item after it has been imported.

Manufacturer- this field lets you know what company manufacturers the effect, which can help when reordering the effect and also allows you to filter the inventory items by manufacturer in both the Inventory Editor and Effect Browser listings.  The names are selected from a drop-down list in order to save typing and keep names consistent throughout the database.  If the manufacturer you are looking for is not in the list, or you want to alter the name used for an existing entry, you can click the Edit button to bring up the list edit screen shown below.

The manufacturer list editing panel.

Selling Price- this field contains the list price of the effect, which is the price used to calculate the selling price of a show for your clients.

Purchase Cost- this is the wholesale price for the effect that you pay yourself.  If your vendor changes their prices and you find yourself needing to update the purchase cost of many effects in your inventory, it is recommended that you use the Price Wizard described here to make the task easier.

Inventory- this is the number of items that you have in stock for this effect.  This is an important field if you plan to use ShowSim to manage your inventory stock and reorder status.  If you get a new shipment and need to update this field, you can either add the incoming quantity to the current value by hand, or you can enter the incoming quantity into the field to the right of the Add button and let ShowSim do the addition for you when you click the Add button.

Reorder Thresh- this is a threshold quantity that represents the minimum number of each effect that must be in stock before ordering more.  When the Inventory count reaches this value, or falls below it, then an Inventory alert will be generated when viewing Restock alerts from the Inventory Alert panel described here.

Physical Data
Physical data contains attributes of the effect itself, such as weight, safety distance, prefire time etc.  The prefire time value is especially important, since inaccurate values will effect the timing of your choreographed effects.

Class- this is a government designated classification for the effect, which can have any number of values depending on what country you operate in.  If the class specification you need does not exist in the list, you can use the Edit button to bring up the Class Editor shown below.  This editor will allow you to add new class designations, edit existing ones or delete unnecessary ones.

The class list editing panel.

Explosive Weight- this is the weight of the active combustible material within the effect, also called the “active weight” in some countries.  The explosive weight does not include the weight of the shell casing, wrapper or other inert material.

Gross Weight- this is the total weight of the shell including all packaging, casing and other inert material.

Setback Distance- this is the minimum viewing distance that the audience must be located from the point where the shell is fired.  This distance will vary depending on the regulations in the state or country that you operate in.

Prefire Time- this is the amount of time between when a shell fires and when it breaks in the sky.  This parameter does not apply to items that don’t have a rise time delay, such as mines, gerbs or strobe pots.  Accurate prefire times are critical when timing shell effects to music, so it is important to make sure that this field is accurately set for all shells.  The manufacturer documented prefire times found in product catalogs are only general figures that are often not accurate for all shells.  Many display operators who are serious about creating well timed musical shows will measure the prefire times for each effect they have in stock by actually firing the shell and recording the time.  Unfortunately this measured time can sometimes be subject to small changes between different lots, even when the lots are manufactured by the same company!  Because orders are often farmed out between different manufacturers in China depending on their workload, brand name does not always indicate consistency between lots.

Duration- this represents the amount of time the effect will burn.  Currently the duration field is not used by ShowSim, since the durations of the simulations are controlled from the effect editor where each effect is created.  However, this parameter will be implemented in a future version of ShowSim, so if you have the data on hand you can enter it now to save time later.