Whats the most combinations Statestep can handle?
Statestep continually checks the model you’re working on and the unusual power of its interface depends on its performing a lot of calculations at interactive speed. You might expect that there would be some fixed limit to the size of the model that can be handled in this way, e.g., that the program would suddenly fall over when the number of possible combinations exceeded some number X. However, there is no fixed limit: Statestep operates symbolically, that is, it uses reasoning to avoid having to list out every possibility in the computer’s memory. What this means is that whether a model is too big for Statestep on a given machine is a complex function of the model’s characteristics: how many constraints there are and how they relate to each other, how many rules for a given event, whether complicated formulas are used, etc. Experience suggests that the limiting factor in practice is more likely to be a desire to restrict the number of variables so that they fit within the width of t
