Review and optimize analytics cases

The Case Stack page shows the different cases that will be analyzed during optimization. Each row represents a different permutation of possible settings. Depending on the type of analytics, these may be candidate crudes, feedstocks or products, sensitivity items or flexibility parameters.

To optimize all the cases in the case stack, click Run in the Modelling group of the Home ribbon tab. A progress bar in the bottom left of the application shows the current progress through the stack of cases. After optimization, the case stack is updated with the optimization results in the Alert and Status columns, and with the objective function values.

Choose Force Rebuild from the context menu to discard and rebuild all analytic scenarios. Note that any optimization results are discarded as well.

To optimize a subset of cases:

1. Select the cases you want to optimize. You can click and drag along a column to select a range of contiguous rows.

2. Right-click and choose Optimize Selected from the context menu. The selected cases are optimized.

   Tip: See this topic for how to publish your case data to file after optimization.
   Consider enabling the Discard Analytic Results when Publishing Data optional feature if you notice a reduction in performance for large analytic models after publishing data.

To inspect the results for cases in the case stack, you have the following options:

• Examine diagnostic messages in the Diagnostics pane.

• In the Stack View page, use existing watch sets, or newly configured watch sets, to review specific results within the case.

• If available for the type of analytic you are using, open the Economics Detail page to review the economics of the different cases.

• If using the Solution Flexibility analytic, open the Flexibility Parameters Summary page to review the results for the base case and the lower and upper target for each flexibility parameter.

• Select a case of interest and select a report to generate.

• Select one or more cases and click Create in the Cases group of the Home ribbon tab, or right click and choose Create Cases from the context menu. This adds the generated cases to the model hierarchy, as siblings of the analytic. The created cases contain all the overrides and settings as generated by the analytic (for example, a different set of pricing or unit sensitivities).

  

  You can then review the results in the newly generated cases.

Diagnostics

Click Diagnostics in the Views group of the Home ribbon tab to open or close the Diagnostics pane. This is mostly similar to the diagnostic panes in the planning environment.

One additional feature is the Showing all Cases toolbar button. Use this button to show only the diagnostic messages related to the selected cases in the Case Stack page.

3. Click the button to enable the filter. The filter is enabled if the button has a light blue border, like the other three buttons in the previous image.

4. Select one or more cases in the Case Stack page. The button label updates to reflect the number of selected cases: for example, it changes to Showing 4 selected Cases if four cases are selected. The diagnostic messages are filtered accordingly.

5. Click the button again to disable the filter.

If no cases are selected in the Case Stack page, the filter has no effect even if enabled.

Typically you will want to select a small number of cases. For example, you may want to examine a few failing cases in the analytic. Selecting a much larger number of cases may adversely affect the performance of this feature.

Tip: When you move away from the Case Stack page with the filter active, the filter automatically switches to No Cases selected. This is to avoid delays due to all the diagnostics being loaded. You can disable the filter manually when you need to display the diagnostics again.

Inspect case stack results

The Stack View page shows the values of the variables in a watch set for each of the cases defined in the analytic. From this page you can view, create, modify and export watch sets just as you would in the Watch window.

Choose a watch set from the Set drop-down menu to populate the page with the variable values for all the cases. Watch sets should have been pre-configured, but can be added to the current workspace or edited if required.

Customize solution values display

You can customize the way result values are shown in the Watch window via the following toolbar icons:

• Click the icon to add a green background to the table cells showing solution values. The intensity of the background color is proportional to the cell value, allowing you to quickly compare values across cases.

• Click the icon to toggle the display of rows where the solutions values are the same for all cases. To the right of the icon you can set the tolerance, in percentage units, for considering two solution values identical.

Charts

You can display several chart types by clicking the corresponding buttons in the Watch window toolbar.

Customize the graphs with the following controls:

• Watch Items: Enter a value in this field to limit the number of watch items displayed. For example, if you enter a value of 3, only the first three items in the watch set, starting from the top, will be shown in the graph.

• Transpose (): Click this icon to switch cases and watch items so that either set is plotted as series. This is not available for the bar chart.

• Legend (): Click this icon to toggle the display of the graph legend. This is not available for the bar and scatter chart.

Scatter chart

All chart types except the scatter chart automatically show the solution values for the selected watch set, and update whenever you select another set.

For the scatter chart you must explicitly choose what to plot via the controls at the bottom of the chart. From the list of available watch sets, select the items you wish to display on the x and y axes. Also select the relevant parameter to display, such as solution value or price. The parameter value is displayed in the watch item unit of measure.

If you require a third dimension, select the check box to enable the z-axis on the scatter graph. This will plot a bubble chart, where the size of the bubble is used to represent the value of the third dimension.

Compare cases

The Case Comparison page shows the differences between the cases generated automatically by the analytic settings. For each generated case, the differences relative to the base case are shown. Generated differences will depend on the options selected for candidates and/or sensitivity items.