Extending the Sim::OPT exploration framework
OPTcue is an extension of Sim::OPT for additional forms of design-space exploration, optimization and analysis. It works with the same discrete design-space representation, model-transformation machinery and simulation environment used by OPT.
OPTcue therefore extends an existing framework rather than replacing it with an unrelated optimizer.
Search methods inside an existing framework
Search directives operate within Sim::OPT’s case and block structure. Design-space state remains explicit: the surrounding coordinates of a problem, the active search variables, accumulated results and model-transformation context continue to belong to the same Sim::OPT workflow.
This is particularly important when an optimization problem has been decomposed into overlapping subspaces. Additional search procedures can be used inside those subspaces without abandoning the decomposition itself.
Accumulating experience
OPTcue contains orchestration for cumulative and nested exploration, allowing information generated during one search to remain available to subsequent searches. It can operate with direct simulation results as well as metamodel-supported data.
Simulation and model transformation
Simulation remains external to the optimizer. OPTcue relies on the surrounding Sim::OPT machinery to create or transform models, launch the configured simulation tools, retrieve results and construct the performance information used by the search.
Feasibility can therefore be enforced by the same model-transformation and constraint-propagation mechanisms used elsewhere in Sim::OPT.
Multi-objective exploration and analysis
The present distribution includes the NSGA-II evolutionary search module. OPTcue also participates in analysis after exploration, including the sensitivity and fundamentality procedures documented separately.
The current distribution
The present Sim::OPT + OPTcue distribution contains the OPTcue orchestration layer, its compiled supporting component and the bridge required to cooperate with the wider Sim::OPT environment. Among optional evolutionary search modules, the current package supplies NSGA-II.
OPTcue has been developed as an extensible framework and its source documentation contains references to a broader family of experimental search procedures. Those references describe the wider development history of OPTcue; they should not be interpreted as a list of modules supplied in the present distribution.