ADAMS/Insight  

ASCII Conduit

Within the MSC.ADAMS analysis environment there are conduits between ADAMS/Insight and other MSC.ADAMS products such as ADAMS/Car, ADAMS/Chassis, and ADAMS/Engine. These conduits streamline the process by taking advantage of the inherent parametric strengths of the vertical applications.

ADAMS/Insight ASCII Conduit expands the utility of ADAMS/Insight and allows it to be used when the vertical applications with customized conduits to ADAMS/Insight are not available. The ASCII conduit provides the power of a streamlined parametric investigation process for systems that are defined by text files. For example, if you only have an .adm and .acd file of an analytical ADAMS/Solver system, you could use the ASCII conduit to execute various ADAMS/Insight investigation strategies. The ASCII conduit also allows ADAMS/Insight to be used with non-MSC.ADAMS products such as MSC.EASY5, MSC.Dytran, and others.

A series of tutorials are available that offer examples of how ADAMS/Insight can work with other applications. See following guides in the ADAMS/Insight online help:

• Using ADAMS/Insight with the ASCII Conduit (ASC)
• Using ADAMS/Insight with ADAMS/Car
• Using ADAMS/Insight with ADAMS/Chassis
• Using ADAMS/Insight with ADAMS/Engine
• Using ADAMS/Insight with ADAMS/View

Latin HyperCube supported as a design option

A new design option, the Latin HyperCube, has been added to ADAMS/Insight. The Latin Hypercube design is similar to a Sweep Study design, except that the factor values in each column are randomly ordered instead of uniformly sweeping from the minimum value to maximum value.

A Latin Hypercube design uses as many values as possible for each factor. Each factor's values are randomly ordered so that each run has a random combination of factor values. Continuous factors have a different value for each run. The values are equally spaced, running from the minimum value to maximum factor value.

Discrete factors have a fixed number of values. If there are more runs than discrete values, there will be runs with duplicate factor values. If there are fewer runs than discrete values, then not all values will be used.

Reuse option

The reuse option allows a previously defined experiment to be referenced. When you reuse components, ADAMS/Insight updates your current experiment to use as many of the attributes and settings of the old experiment as possible. As a result, you can easily rerun an old experiment or create a similar new experiment based on an older one. The reuse menu option can be found under the File pull-down menu. You can also specify an experiment to reuse the ADAMS/Insight Export dialog box in ADAMS/View.

Tie factor enhancements
Several enhancements have been made to make tying factors easier to do. Specifically:

• The Factor Form now has a tabbed area for ties. The Tie tab is visible but disabled by default. It is enabled when a tie is selected in the treeview. Selecting the tie displays a table of the values of all the tied factors and allows you to specify the association between these factors. The table shows all the children factors of the tie and the resulting nominal value of each. Mouse over tip text is available on the row and column labels of the table.

• On the Factor Form of the tied factors, the Type, Delta Type, Nominal Value, Settings, and Tolerance text boxes are all disabled. These values are controlled by the tie and therefore should not be changed for the individual factors.

• Previously, ADAMS/Insight supported a Tie Type of Scale (basically a multiplication operation). Now there is an option to offset the child value from the parent value (that is, an addition operation). You can alter the Tie Type by selecting the appropriate radio button and then selecting the Apply button (note that you have to select the Apply button for the columns in the table).

• When a tie is untied, you now have the option to either go back to the last saved values for the individual factors (before the tie was created) or to use the values recently modified by the tie operation.

• The tie functionality now includes a minimal set of heuristics in place to predict what you want to do when you first tie the factors. For example, if two factors are selected and one is -142 and the other is 142, we assume this is a symmetry attempt and alter the children to the appropriate -1.0 and 1.0 values. You can overwrite these assumptions.

Export to MATLAB of regression models

The export model functionality has been extended to allow the regression model to be exported in a MATLAB .m file format. Now, .htm, .slk, .bas, and .m files can be generated from ADAMS/Insight regression models. The MATLAB format file contains MATLAB matrices that can be used to compute the responses.

Simulation Leaf to the treeview

A Simulation Leaf has been added to the treeview to provide access to attributes of the originating application. The simulation Script and Model Name reference has been moved from the Design Specification Form to the Simulation Form.

Enhanced programmatic control of experiment creation, manipulation, and execution via Python and CMD
(for interface with ADAMS/View only)

Additional Python and CMD functions allow you to customize batch processing of an entire investigation strategy, or create your own conduit to a particular analysis environment. Specifically, new CMD commands are available to enable the inclusion factors and inclusion responses to be populated directly. If any of the targeted factors or attributes have the .ainn_ffalg_01 name, then these are automatically pushed to the inclusions list rather than the default behavior of going to the candidates list. Python functions are also available to directly manipulate experiment files.