Developement Of A Batch Mode For Conduit And Its ... - Cal Poly

2.3 Run Mode
The object of the Run Mode is to provide the ability to run multiple CONDUIT
problems in such a way as to minimize user intervention. In developing this capability, a
method of running the multiple problems had to be defined, taking into consideration
several possibilities. The process of running the cases also had to be developed in such a
way that it was completely automatic. Furthermore, it also had to provide sufficient
feedback to the user, thus, the GUI was developed to display the results and current status
of the cases.
2.3.1 Run Methods
In the preliminary planning for Run Mode, several methods of running the cases
were considered. Primarily, these methods dealt with how to actually run the multiple
cases. One possibility was to simply run the cases in sequence, one at a time. An
alternate method would be to run multiple cases at once, taking advantage of the
capabilities of multi-processor machines. However, most of the capability required to
control multiple CPUs was removed from MATLAB in the latest release. Thus the
sequential method was chosen.
The secondary consideration to the run method dealt with how best to use the
design parameters to optimize multiple cases. The first idea that was proposed was to
start the first case with the design parameters assigned to it. After that case has been
optimized, the design parameters would be passed as the starting parameters of the next
case. Thus, if a gain schedule were done in small increments, each case would start with
design parameters close to the optimized values, theoretically speaking. While this
method would probably work well under the right conditions, those conditions are very
47