DATADVANCE Releases pSeven v6.13

TOULOUSE, France, June 6, 2018 – DATADVANCE development team announces the availability of pSeven 6.13, a new version of their flagship platform for data analysis and optimization.

In this release, their efforts were mainly focused on addressing the most reported customer ‘wish-lists’ and demands. They are proud to say that they have largely accomplished that goal. A new version of the product will enable our users to leverage the resources of multi-core systems more efficiently. Apart from refreshing the overall look and feel of the platform, we’ve come up with many enhancements in Edit and Analyze screen, introduced new block features that extend the existing functionality and deployed updates for usability and performance.

Appearance and Usability

This version brings a fresh take on the visual style user experience of pSeven. Namely, they:

• Increased font size on GUI elements for better readability.
• Boosted GUI responsiveness, for example: now the block information panel refreshes the data in no time even for blocks with a multitude of ports.
• Added the ability to switch pSeven to the fullscreen mode by selecting File -> Toggle fullscreen from the menu or pressing F11.
• Added a white background view mode, which can be toggled with the dedicated button on the view toolbar. This mode can be also used to make workflow screenshots for external use.

Workflow Enhancements

In this update, we rolled out various convenience features in Edit screen so that their users can do routine tasks faster and easier. The topical issues here include:

• Redesigned the Block library pane, added block icons and keyboard navigation support. Changed block grouping and added new tags indicating block development status.
• Added the ability to set colors for Composite blocks in a workflow using the respective button on the edit toolbar. This helps to differentiate the functionality of the blocks and navigate through the workflow easier.

• Added the ability to open block configuration from Run screen by double-clicking a block (pSeven will automatically switch to the Edit screen and open the block’s configuration dialog).
• Improved the workflow tree pane to make it more functional: it can be toggled on and off, resized and used for workflow navigation.

Block Updates

In this version, we also tackled some issues to ensure higher performance and stability of the Design of experiments block. We introduced a new option to include the initial input sample into the final generated DoE and implemented other handy features.

pSeven 6.13 delivers enhanced integration capabilities. They focused on refining and extending the existing functionality of some CAD/CAE integration blocks to take customer experience with the platform a step further. Some of the noteworthy changes involving integration blocks are outlined below.

• Excel block can now read values of variables from disjoint selections and write data from a single variable to such a selection. For example, it allows filling a single vector variable using two or more cell ranges as data sources. They also added the ability to run document macros from the block’s configuration dialog for testing purposes.

• ANSYS Workbench block is capable of processing batches of input parameters which means it supports parallel calculations. Another handy improvement is that two or more ANSYS Workbench blocks in a workflow can now run simultaneously if they load different projects, and the HPC Parametric Pack license allows running several application instances.
• pSeven 6.13 brings the support of the Formula and Table dependency types for initial data and boundary conditions in the FloEFD block. The block can now be configured to rebuild the project and run batch results processing without running calculations.
• CAD blocks: We simplified configuring and testing the simulation models represented by the Composite block with nested CAD integration blocks.
• SOLIDWORKS, Kompas3D, Creo, NX, CATIA, FloEFD, ANSYS Workbench: we added the Copy value command to the Document tree pane menu so that values of parameters can be quickly copied from the loaded document to the clipboard.

Analyze Enhancements

pSeven 6.13 comes with some notable improvements to various tools in the Analyze screen. They have added:

• Support for multiple datasets in the Parallel coordinates plot. New functionality will enable the users to simultaneously visualize the optimization history and optimal points on the same plot.

• Command to extract a training sample data from an approximation model to a report database so this data can be used with other analysis tools.
• Improved support for high-dimensional models in the Model Explorer.
• Support of categorical variables in the Model Explorer.

Performance Improvements

In this version, we continue to move toward better usability and performance of the platform. Some steps in this direction are as follows:

• Enabled support for high-degree parallelization on systems with more than 64 logical processors and several processor groups (see Processor Groups here) for core algorithmic blocks in pSeven for Windows (Optimizer, ApproxBuilder, Design of experiments, DFBuilder, DRBuilder) and the Model Builder tool. In general, it means that pSeven 6.13 shows significant performance increase when using high degree parallelization on Windows systems with 64+ logical processors.
• Improved compatibility with systems that lack the OpenGL support. In other words, pSeven now uses a bare minimum of OpenGL features by default. A separate (optional) OpenGL mode is added, which requires OpenGL 2.1 for the Windows version and OpenGL 2.0 for the Linux version. Running pSeven in the OpenGL mode on systems that satisfy these requirements can improve performance and GUI responsiveness.
• Restored support for X11 forwarding in pSeven for Linux, which stopped since pSeven 6.8 due to OpenGL problems. You can now run pSeven for Linux on a remote host using ssh -X.

New Documentation Sections and Refreshed Examples

This release brings many updates to examples and user manual. They replaced the ApproxPlayer block with Approximation model, fixed outdated settings in Optimizer and other blocks, refreshed projects in the pSeven examples package to reflect the latest changes. They enhanced the manual with chapters on the Creo block and finalized the Program block description by explaining how to run jobs on clusters.

About DATADVANCE

DATADVANCE is an independent software developer that offers its customers’ software solutions and consulting services for intellectual data analysis, predictive modeling and design optimization.

Today pSeven is used for process integration and design optimization. It provides a smooth integration with engineering software tools and ease of use guaranteed by the intelligent algorithms of pSeven Core. This enables engineers to use data analysis and design optimization algorithms, formerly available for math experts only. Worldwide leaders in aerospace, automotive and other industries have already implemented pSeven and pSeven Core in the design processes to boost their engineering capabilities.

DATADVANCE continues to develop mathematical algorithms and techniques inside pSeven to deliver its customers the most high-performing functionalities. The development is carried out in close partnership with the leading scientific centers all over the world.

The company has an operational office in Toulouse, France (DATADVANCE SAS) and a strong R&D team in Moscow, Russia (DATADVANCE LLC). All of the offices provide trainings and engineering services for your convenience.

For more information, visit DATADVANCE website.