The flow chart explanation window is reached from the Explain option that is available on several pop-up menus that provide help during use of IFs. It can also be reached from the Flow Chart sub-option of the Options option on the Causal Driver Linkage Tracing window.

These paths are intended to bring up a flow chart that shows the variable selected at the time of exercise of the option from the pop-up menu. Because these flow charts are manually created, not created automatically from the computer code, they sometimes lag behind the changing structure of the model. Yet most often they help place the variable in the context of the appropriate sub-model.

The flow charts that appear through use of this option are selections from the full set of flow charts that are intended to show the structure of the entire IFs model. The user can also reach these flow charts from the Flow Chart subsection of the various submodels documented in Understanding the Model: “Opening the Black Box.” The flow charts are all created manually with Visio.