Speed up large optimization runs

[Ben Zeitz 1]

Hi,

Just a little reminder on how to speed up an optimization run if it comes to many designs (>500).

Unset the "Refresh Results Table" button in the leftmost position of the tool bar of a Design Results Table (see pic).
It will prevent the table from updating after each new design. (By the way, this is a global setting and works for all Design Results Tables.)

 

Because all statistics and bars have to be re-calculated and the entire table has to be re-drawn whenever a design is added to the table it consumes a certain amount of time to do this for many designs. In addition the update process takes longer the more designs the table contains.

If the "Refresh Results Table" button is unset the table updates only once after the run has finished.
But of course, you can always toggle the "Refresh Results Table" button while the optimization is running to refresh the table manually.

Cheers
Ben

[Mr. Soultanias Ilias 0]

Hi Ben and all,

 

I am running an optimization with the NSGA II algorithm within the framework and I think it's running pretty much slow. (like 14-15 mins per design) although the design when run alone it takes almost the half time. I have already de-activated the autoupdate of the results table and I don't think I will make the model "invisible" as It should be needed to calculate some evalutations and objectives. Do you have any other suggestions to speed up my optimization?

 

Thanks in advance!

Ilias

[Mr. Arne Bergmann 27]

Hi Ilias,

 

It is kind of hard to guess the correct answer to this without knowing what is really involved in the time it takes to evaluate a design.

 

Are there external computations involved? If that is the case and the time the external computations take is very small when compared to the time the geometry update takes, it might be worth it to disable the "asynchronous update" option of the computation. Maybe it is the switching back to a finished pending design that takes so long. Or the multiple external computations just overuse the available CPU resources, in which case disabling asynchronous update would help as well.

 

Making the model invisible would probably not make a difference. Only those parts of the model that are needed for evaluations and constraints should be updated during a design engine run (except when you have screenshots configured at the design engine - in that case all visible objects will be updated). If you have no screenshots configured, however, it might be worth a try, to make everything invisible prior to the run (don't worry, all evaluations will still work, they will update what they need, no matter whether the model is visible or not).

 

If these two ideas don't change anything, we will need more information about what is actually taking so long.

 

Arne