Tabular Output Data
In a number of contexts, Dakota can output information in a
whitespace-separated columnar data file, a tabular data file. The most
common usage, to capture the iteration history in a tabular file, is
enabled by including the tabular_data
keyword in the specification (see Listing 25 for an example).
This output format facilitates the transfer of Dakota’s iteration history data to external mathematical analysis and/or graphics plotting packages (e.g., MATLAB, TECplot, Excel, S-plus, Minitab).
Note
The default file name for the top-level tabular output data is “dakota_tabular.dat”, though you may wish to choose an alternate name.
Rosenbrock Example
%eval_id interface x1 x2 response_fn_1
1 NO_ID -2 -2 3609
2 NO_ID -1.5 -2 1812.5
3 NO_ID -1 -2 904
4 NO_ID -0.5 -2 508.5
The first line contains the names of the variables and responses, as well as headers for the evaluation id and interface columns:
%eval_id interface x1 x2 response_fn_1
The number of function evaluations will match the number of evaluations listed in the summary part of the output file for single method approaches; the names of inputs and outputs will match the descriptors specified in the input file. The interface column is useful when a Dakota input file contains more than one simulation interface. In this instance, there is only one, and it has no id interface specified, so Dakota has supplied a default value of NO ID. This file is ideal for import into other data analysis packages.
Container Optimization Example
Example tabular output
from the “container” optimization problem is shown in
Listing 26. This annotated tabular format
file contains the complete history of data requests from NPSOL (8
requests map into a total of 40 function evaluations when including the
central finite differencing). The first column is the data request
number, the second column is the interface ID (which is NO_ID if the
user does not specify a name for the interface), the third and fourth
columns are the design parameter values (labeled in the example as
“H” and “D”), the fifth column is the objective function
(labeled “obj_fn”), and the sixth column is the nonlinear equality
constraint (labeled “nln_eq_con_1”).
%eval_id interface H D obj_fn nln_eq_con_1
1 NO_ID 4.5 4.5 107.1314511 8.04440764
2 NO_ID 5.801246882 3.596476363 94.33737399 -4.59103645
3 NO_ID 5.197920019 3.923577479 97.7797214 -0.6780884711
4 NO_ID 4.932877133 4.044776216 98.28930566 -0.1410680284
5 NO_ID 4.989328733 4.026133158 98.4270019 -0.005324671422
6 NO_ID 4.987494493 4.027041977 98.43249058 -7.307058453e-06
7 NO_ID 4.987391669 4.02708372 98.43249809 -2.032538049e-08
8 NO_ID 4.987389423 4.027084627 98.43249812 -9.691802916e-12
Any evaluations from Dakota’s internal finite differencing are suppressed, to facilitate rapid plotting of the most critical data. This suppression of lower level data is consistent with the data that is sent to the graphics windows. If this data suppression is undesirable, this section describes an approach where every function evaluation, even the ones from finite differencing, can be saved to a file in tabular format by using the Dakota restart utility.
Note
The second column labeled “interface” is new as of Dakota 6.1. It identifies which interface was used to map the variables to responses on each line of the tabular file (recall that the interface defines which simulation is being run though the analysis driver specification). Disambiguating the interface is important when using hybrid methods, multi-fidelity methods, or nested models. In more common, simpler analyses, users typically ignore the first two columns and only focus on the columns of inputs (variables) and outputs (responses). To generate tabular output in Dakota 6.0 format, use the :ref:`custom-annotated format <input:tabularformat>`.
Note
As of Dakota 6.1, the tabular file will include columns for all of the variables (both active and inactive) present in a given interface. Previously, Dakota only wrote the “active” variables. Recall that some variables may be inactive if they are not operated on by a particular method (e.g. uncertain variables might not be active in an optimization, design variables may not be active in a sampling study). The order of the variables printed out will be in Dakota’s standard variable ordering, which is indicated by the input specification order, and summarized in the Dakota Reference Manual.
