About Study Results

Study Information

The information icon in the upper left corner of the Study Results panel opens the Study Information dialog box. It contains the run details of the study and details about any alternatives you have generated for designs in this study.

A status label provides some high-level information about the design points. First, the number of design points that have completed running are shown. Next, the number of active points is shown. The number of active points is the number of points that have not been filtered from the display using the Filters pane. After that, the number of selected points are shown, both the unfiltered number and the total number. Finally, the number of points that you have added to the Favorites collection is shown.

Player

The player in the top middle region of the panel allows you to cycle through the selected design points. You can jump to the first or last point directly, step through each point one at a time, or click Play to automatically cycle through each selected point. If only one point is selected, the player cycles through all the points. You can control playback speed from the list next to the player buttons, and you can zoom to view images at two times magnification.

Views and Options

There are three main view buttons at the upper right of the panel. The first button displays a Scatter plot view, a scatter plot and the result plots stored for each design. The second button displays the Compare view, which shows all the selected points in a tabular view so that you can compare the variable values for each design. The last button displays the Favorites view, which shows in a tabular view of all the points you have added to the Favorites collection.

The gear icon in the upper right corner of the panel opens the Options dialog box. You can use the options to control the ranking method and the format of numbers displayed in the tables. The ranking method determines how infeasible points are treated. If you choose the relative method, all the feasible points are ranked first, followed by all the infeasible points. This ensures that no infeasible point is ranked higher than a feasible point. If you choose the absolute method, all points are ranked without regard to whether they are feasible or infeasible. Using the absolute method it is possible that an infeasible point might be ranked higher than a feasible point.

Filters Pane

The Filters pane on the left side of the panel can be shown or hidden using the expander icon on the left side of the panel. The check boxes (at the top of the pane) allow you to quickly show or hide a group of points, such as all the infeasible points. The individual variable filters (in the lower portion of the pane) allow you to screen out points by adjusting the range of allowable values for a variable. You can reset all the filters by clicking on the reset button on the top right of the Filters pane.

Scatter Plot Pane

The scatter plot allows you to select any variable for the X and Y axes using the drop-down lists at the top of the pane so that you can look for meaningful patterns. In addition to selecting the X and Y axes, you can also select a third value by which the points are color coded. For example, you could plot a geometric parameter along the X axis, stress along the Y axis, and color code the points by their mass value. You can hover over any point to reveal a popup that shows the design number and its XY values. The best design is shown using a special symbol, which is labeled in the legend. The best design is determined by ranking each design according to how well it met your objectives and respected the constraints you specified.

The plot toolbar provides a number of tools to help you explore the results. There are several selection commands: select all, box-select, and lasso-select. You can select and unselect points individually using click and shift-click, or you can use one of the selection tools to select many points at once. Selected points appear larger than the unselected points. The zoom and pan commands let you zero in on a subset of points, and the reset command restores the view so that all points can be seen. The hover toggle allows you to turn on or off the popups that appear when you hover over a point.

You can right-click on any point in the scatter plot to reveal its context menu. From this menu you can add or remove the point from the Favorites collection, generate an alternative, show diagnostics related to that point’s simulation, center the tree on a failed point, or open the design in a new app if you generated an alternative for this point.

Model Plots Pane

A set of plots is generated automatically for each simulation. You can select a plot to view from the list at the top of this pane. You can cycle through the plots by clicking on the up and down buttons in the list. You can use the image display mode button at the top right of the pane to choose either a single image or view all images in a “filmstrip” view. You can use the image layout button in the top bar to select whether the scatter plot and images are shown side-by-side, or with the plot at the top of the pane and the images at the bottom. You can also zoom to view images at two times magnification.

Details Pane

The details pane on the right side of the panel can be shown or hidden using the expander button on the right side of the panel. The details pane shows the values for all the variables in the current design. The current design is denoted by the point with the dark black outline. The buttons in the upper right of the details pane allow you to add the point to the Favorites collection, or access the point’s context menu. The commands in the context menu are the same commands as those in the context menu revealed when you right-click on a point in the scatter plot. The table in the details pane initially shows only the Name and Value columns, but you can right-click in the table heading to reveal a context menu that allows you to expose other columns, such as the Minimum and Maximum columns. You can also right-click in a row in the table to set that variable as the X, Y, or color value in the scatter plot.

The Compare view displays only the selected points in a tabular format so that you can compare them more closely. There are five different views within the Compare view. The actual view shows the actual values for each variable. The difference view shows the actual values for one baseline design, and the difference in value from the baseline for the other designs. You can set any design as the baseline by clicking on the baseline button on the left side of the caption below the image displayed at the top of each column. The percentage view is similar to the difference view, except that it shows differences with the baseline in terms of percentages. The images view shows the plots for each design instead of the variable values. The thumbnails view displays only the current image. The current image can be set by using the drop-down list at the top of the pane. Thumbnails can also be displayed in a larger window by using the image viewer command in the top right part of this pane.

By default, designs in the Compare view are sorted by rank in ascending order. You can change the sort order using the Sort panel accessed from the sort button in the top bar. You can choose a different variable to sort by, and you can specify more than one variable to perform a multi-level sort.

The Favorites view shows all the designs that you have added to the Favorites collection. You can use the same views to compare these designs as found in the Compare view.

To investigate a design further, select Generate Alternatives in the context menu to generate an alternative from that design. Alternative generation branches the product and creates a new Physics Simulation object that refers to the branched product.

Alternative generation can be time consuming for complex products and is carried out in the background. You can monitor its progress through the status messages in the bottom right part of the Study Results panel or in the Alternative Generation tab of the Study Information dialog box. You can also select Alternatives from the color settings in the scatter plot to reveal which designs have alternatives. You can right-click a point that has alternatives and use the context menu to open the design in another app.

You cannot generate alternative designs while the study is running, and you must wait to complete generation of one set of alternatives before you can begin generating another set. Once the alternative generation is complete, you can refresh the Study Results panel to launch alternative generation for another point. You refresh the Study Results panel by closing it and reopening it.