Seeding a Study with Predefined Designs

For an optimization study, setting a design seed specifies the initial point of the optimization search. By specifying a good start point, you improve the efficiency of the optimization process. An adaptive sampling study also accepts design seeds as the starting point for its learning process.

In Design Manager, the following study types allow design seeds:
Study Type Sub Type
Optimization
Optimization Type
  • Weighted sum of all objectives
  • Multiple objective tradeoff study (Pareto front)
Adaptive Sampling All

When seeding a design study, you can enter designs manually or refer to designs of a previous design study. To seed an design study with specific designs that you enter manually:

  1. In the applicable study type, right-click the Design Seeds node and select New Design Seed > Manual Design Seed.
  2. Edit the design seed node and, in the Manual Design Table dialog, set the designs with which you want to seed the design study. See Creating Manual Designs.
To seed a study with designs of a previous design study:
  1. Within the previous design study, create a design set that contains the relevant designs. See Creating Design Sets. If required, create multiple design sets.
    An Optimization study allows you to add design seeds on the fly during the study run. An Adaptive Sampling study only considers the seeds you add before the study run.
  2. If you want to use designs from a previous study that belongs to another Design Manager project, first export the desired designs from that project and import them into the current project. To export and import designs:
    1. Open the relevant Design Manager project containing the previous design study.
    2. In the previous design study, right-click the relevant design set node and select Export to CSV....
    3. In the Export to CSV dialog, save the design set as .csv.
    4. If no further exports are required, close the previous Design Manager project.
    5. In the current Optimization study, right-click the Design Seeds node and select New Design Seed > Manual Design Seed.
    6. Import the .csv file. See Creating Manual Designs.
    7. Repeat steps a. to d. to refer to multiple design sets.
  3. If you want to use designs from an earlier design study within the current Design Manager project, you can refer directly to design sets. To choose design sets within the current project:
    1. Right-click the Design Seeds node and select New Design Seed > Seed From Design Set.
    2. Select the design seed node and set Design Sets to the chosen design sets from the previous study.
You can also copy design seeds from a previous Optimization study to your current Optimization study:
  1. Make sure that the input parameters and responses of your source study and target study match.
    For each pair of associated input parameters or responses, the referenced objects (parameters or reports) in the reference simulation must have the same name and compatible units.
  2. In the source study, right-click the respective Design Seeds > [design seed] node and select Copy.
  3. In your target study, right-click the Design Seeds node and select Paste.
    Alternatively, you can drag-and-drop the respective Design Seeds > [design seed] node of the source study onto the Design Seeds node of your target study.
When you run the Optimization study, Design Manager evaluates the specified designs and supplies the results to the optimization algorithm.