Abstract for: Getting Started with Ventity

This is a hands-on introduction to Ventity, a platform for system dynamics modeling that supports detailed and object oriented modeling while preserving attractive features of existing tools, including a completely declarative language with a graphical representation. We will introduce the software and new concepts, including collections of entities, attributes, relationships, aggregation and allocation functions, and actions. Features facilitate modularity and collaboration, provide a more natural description of detail than arrays, and solve sparse matrix problems. It has application to both traditional system dynamics, with modular sectors, and to agent based modeling.