ISE has a clean and object interface. The user can quickly find anything he needs, without opening several different windows. Following, there is some points that the user will find on each simulation.

• Openning screen:

 When ISE started, it shows a list of the recent saved projects and another (quite extensive) list of examples. Among those, one may find several classical problems from the literature and also some special simulation cases, like involving three-phase equilibrium or mass and energy integration. Some of those are available in video.

•  Starting a new project:

The first thing to be done is to choose which libraries will be used on the simulation. Currently, there are available two libraries: the Water Steam library and the Process Engineering library.

The Water Steam library offers models to calculate steam cycles, implementing properties calculation according to IAPWS95 data.

The Process Engineering already offers most of the required models to build an industrial process simulation: several separation columns, flash devices, chemical reactors, heat exchangers, pumps, compressors, valves,etc.

• Setting up the components and thermodynamic models:

Once the user has chosen the Process Engineering library, he will be prompted to select what components will be used on the simulation and what thermodynamic models should be used.
In this aspect, ISE offers what is the most advanced mathematical models available, being ahead of most other existing simulators.
ISE has more than 1200 chemical compounds on its database and the user can choose as many as he wants. For the thermodynamic calculations, ISE offers the most established equations of state (Peng-Robinson, Soave-Redlich-Kwong, among others) and the most modern mixing rules (UMR, UGMR, WS,...). Beyond, it also has rigorous models for the calculation of Gibbs free energy and liquid phase activity.

• Building a simulation:
  

Once the library has been defined (water steam or process engineering), it is presented to the user a blank diagram. From this point, its just a click on the equipments available on the Pallete to add them to the diagram. To connect them, just click on an outlet port from an equipment and drag it to an inlet port of another equipment. ISE recognizes the nature of each port so it won't allow to connect outlet ports to other outlet ports or to connect a material outlet port to an energy or steam inlet port.

The user is free to build the diagram as it is convenient for him. There are interesting features such as resizing the icons, horizontal and vertical reversing, zooming and so on. Big diagrams aren't a problem, there is the Satellite View that provides an easy way to the user locate himself and to browse through the whole diagram.

Clicking on each equipment of the diagram, the Variables area lists every variables the represent that equipment, with its value and unit. By the way, ISE makes unit conversion automatically.

• Simulation set-up:

 At this point, it is necessary to set-up the simulation and that is done by specifying some parameters and conditions. In other words, we have to inform the inputs of the problem: the feeds at the beginning of the diagram, the operating conditions of the unit operations, etc.
On its present state of development, every specification are made on the Variables area. The user just need to click on its value and change it. It will turn blue, which means it is now a specification. The other variables are the ones that ISE will return after running the simulation.
Its interesting to notice that, due to the equation-oriented solving technology, the user has the freedom to choose the variables to be specified. He just need to pay attention to the to the number of degrees of freedom (DF), the difference between the number of variables and the number of equations and specifications, that must be zero. When clicking on each equipment, the Variable area also shows the number of degrees of freedom from only its mathematical model (Local DF), but what really matters are the global degrees of freedom (Global DF), shown at the bottom of ISE's main interface. While it is different than zero, it is also shown a message reminding the user that is essential for the simulation that the degrees of freedom are zero.

• Running the simulation:
  

• Viewing the results:
  

The results can be exported to Excel where detailed reports can be done.