BERT Documentation
  • Getting Started
    • Get Started with BERT
    • Why BERT?
    • Creating Your First System
      • Step 1: Starting a New Project
      • Step 2: Define Your System of Interest
      • Step 3: Identify Primary Output
      • Step 4: Define Output Interface
      • Step 5: Add Customer Sink
      • Step 6: Add a Waste Output
      • Step 7: Identify Primary Inputs
      • Step 8: Traverse The Boundary
      • Step 9: Add Boundary Subsystems
      • Step 10: Adding Internal Flows
      • Step 11: System Decomposition
      • Step 11: Share JSON
      • Next Steps
      • System Elements
      • Advanced Features
      • Video Tutorial
    • Reference Guide
    • Glossary
    • Examples
      • A Home
      • A Cell
      • An LLM
  • Case Studies
    • Bitcoin
  • Analysis, Modeling and Simulation
    • Deep Systems Analysis
    • Modeling
    • Simulation
  • For Researchers
    • System Ontology
    • System Language
  • For Developers
    • Contributing
    • Architecture
  • Roadmap
    • Alpha
  • Beta
  • 1.0
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  1. Getting Started
  2. Creating Your First System

Step 2: Define Your System of Interest

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Last updated 2 months ago

Identify the System of Interest

Every BERT analysis begins with a System of Interest - the primary system you're analyzing in order to develop a deeper scientific understanding of how it works.

This is represented as a main system circle on your canvas.

💡 Tip: Choose a descriptive name that reflects the system you're modeling. This will help you identify your projects later.

Left-click on the circle to open an element details tab where you can enter basic information about the system.

For now there are just a few key details to focus on. Be clear and precise, but brief.

  1. System: The first step is to identify the specific main system you would like to understand. This is your System of Interest (SOI). It could be the company you work for, your local government, or a cell. Name your system, describe context about its purpose and role what this system encompasses.

  2. Boundary: Name the system boundary responsible for defining what is inside vs. what is outside. Describe its general form.

  3. Environment: Name the environment, describe its features.

🔑 Key Concept: The system boundary defines what's inside your system (what you're analyzing) and what's outside (the environment). Drawing this boundary correctly is a critical first step in systems analysis. Properly defining your system boundary is critical. Too broad, and your analysis becomes unwieldy; too narrow, and you miss important interactions.

You don't kneed to worry about all of the other details for now, they can be filled out later since they aren't essential for describing the basic features of our system, just for elaborating the details that will come into play once we want to start designing simulations.

Learn more about them in the advanced features section.

Regularly save your work during analysis to prevent data loss:

  1. Press Ctrl+S (both Windows and Mac)

  2. When prompted, choose a location for your file

  3. Enter a descriptive filename

  4. Click Save to save your BERT model as a JSON file