About the Multi-Objective Design Study

A multi-objective design study helps you find optimal solutions that satisfy several design criteria (design goals). For example, you can investigate possible shapes of a part that let you maintain the part mass and location of the center of gravity within a desired range.

A multi-objective design study provides the following benefits:

• The study helps you find an optimal range of design variables that is most suitable for searching for optimal solutions.

• You can select the Automatic method of sampling or the Manual method of sampling to conduct the study.

• The study finds solutions for multiple design objectives that may be contradictory in nature.

• If more than one optimal solution exist, the study presents you with the results so you can choose the preferred solution.

• You can expand the range for sampling design goals, or you can narrow it down by using different methods for analyzing the data obtained in the experiments.

A Multi-Objective Design study consists of a master table and derived tables in their hierarchical order. Initially, the study lets you examine an entire range in which design variables are allowed to change. There are two methods of conducting the multi-objective design study:

• Automatic—Uses an algorithm that evenly distributes the selection of sample points throughout the allowable design space. It combines the design variables in a manner that covers the maximum design space to be included in the study. This is the default.

• Manual—Allows you to manually specify sampling points for the design variable or import the sampling points from an ASCII text file of the CSV format.

The result of the initial investigation is the master table that lists records of all experiments. You can then narrow down the focus of the study by creating derived tables so you can examine the behavior of the model with a subset of constrained values for design goals or design variables.

You can access any of the tables through the Table Tree to examine its results or edit a table by altering its conditions. After you have examined your findings, you can expand the master table by specifying additional experiments to be conducted within the range designated for the study.

You can save a study to disk with the Save command and then open it later when you return to the model. Saving a study saves all table data.

The system saves the Table Tree within the model. If you do not save the model, the Table Tree is lost and only a text file with the master table is saved to the hard disk.