The shortcut model is useful for studying the dimension dependence of different processes. The processes studied include the behaviour of the power law potential as a function of the dimension, the behaviour of self-avoiding random walks, and the scaling of the mean path length. It may be useful to compare the shortcut model with the small-world network, since the definitions have a lot of similarity. In the small-world network also one starts with a regular lattice and adds shortcuts with probability p . However, the shortcuts are not constrained to connect to a node a fixed distance ahead. Instead, the other end of the shortcut can connect to any randomly chosen node. As a result, the small world model tends to a random graph rather than a two-dimensional graph as the shortcut probability is increased.