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1 Introduction
TOMNET is a general purpose development environment for practical
solution of optimization problems using .NET .
TOMNET has grown out of the need for advanced, robust and reliable
tools to be used in the development of algorithms and software for
the solution of many different types of applied optimization
problems.
There are many good tools available in the area of numerical
analysis, operations research and optimization, but because of the
different languages and systems, as well as a lack of
standardization, it is a time consuming and complicated task to use
these tools. Often one has to rewrite the problem formulation,
rewrite the function specifications, or build some new interface
routine to make everything work. Therefore the first obvious and
basic design principle in TOMNET is:
Define your problem once,
run all available solvers. The system takes care of all interface
problems, whether related to the solver or due to different demands
on the problem specification.
Sometimes it is not clear what solver is best for the particular
type of problem and tests on different solvers can be quite useful.
When developing new solutions tests on thousands of problems are
necessary to fully assess the pros and cons of the setup. One might
want to solve a practical problem very many times, with slightly
different conditions for the run.
All these issues and many more are addressed with the TOMNET
optimization environment. TOMNET gives easy access to a large set of
standard test problems, optimization solvers and utilities.
Furthermore, it is easy to define new problems within the problem
classes, and solve them using any suitable solver objects.
1.1 Overview
Welcome to the TOMNET User's Guide. The Base Module includes a set of
solvers for use in .NET and interface routines needed for all other
packages.
TOMNET includes the following solvers:
-
glbDirect - an unconstrained global solver suitable for
problems with up to 100 variables. Only simple bounds on the
decision variables are supported.
- glcDirect - a constrained global solver for problems with
up to 100 variables. The solver accepts linear, integer and nonlinear
constraints.
1.2 Contents of this manual
- Section 1 provides a basic overview of the
TOMNET Base Module package.
- Section 2 details the system design.
- Section 3 defines the problem types and format for
optimization as well as the solver suites available.
- Section 4 shows how to setup and define the
problems properly.
- Section 4.2 provides information regarding .NET test cases for use with the solvers.
- Section 5 provides an overview of accessing the solvers.
- Section 5.1 describes how to set solver options from .NET .
- Section 6 gives detailed solver references for the Base Module.
- Section 7 contains information on how to use the problem classes, and how to use the tools for creating custom objective functions and constraints.
- Section 8 specifies how derivatives are obtained.
- Section 9 gives some additional notes.
- Section 10 contains all reference material for sparse matrix handling.
1.3 More information
Please visit the following links for more information and see the
illustrative references at the end of this manual.
1.4 Prerequisites
In this manual we assume that the user is familiar with some basics
about optimization and nonlinear programming, and with the .NET programming environment in general.
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TOMNET
