Production and Feature Releases

In our AIMMS release cycle we release Production and Feature Releases. A series of Feature Releases is followed by its Production Release. The most current Production Release is AIMMS 3.10 (March 2010). An overview of new features in this release is provided below.

In May 2010 we have started the release of our Feature Release series of AIMMS 3.11. Our current release is AIMMS 3.11 Feature Release 1 and available for download.

AIMMS 3.10 Production Release

A total of three AIMMS 3.10 Feature Releases have built up to the Production Release of AIMMS 3.10. On this page you can read about the new features in AIMMS 3.10. More details can be found in the release notes.

Features introduced in AIMMS 3.10 FR1

Features introduced in AIMMS 3.10 FR2

*Also available in the AIMMS 3.9 series, starting with AIMMS 3.9.3.

Features introduced in AIMMS 3.10 FR3

*Also available in the AIMMS 3.9 series, starting with AIMMS 3.9.4

Download AIMMS 3.10

New Features AIMMS 3.10

Below, you can find a description of all new features that have been introduced in AIMMS 3.10. The Feature Release in which the features have first been introduced, are mentioned after the feature name, in brackets, where FRx means Feature Release x.

Change Coefficients in Math Program Inspector (FR1)

You can now change the value of linear matrix coefficients directly from within the Math Program Inspector. This allows you to interactively perform sensitivity analysis on the linear matrix coefficients of your problem, without the need to regenerate the matrix.

Tooltips for Buttons (FR1)

AIMMS enables you to build very powerful interfaces around your model, with buttons that enable end-users to control and run optimizations. To help new end-users to understand the buttons that you provide, you can specify tooltips to provide extra information about the action(s) behind the buttons.

Pivot Table State File Manager (FR1)

The versatile AIMMS Pivot Table allows developers and end-users to create their own data views, arranging the columns and rows as they wish. These views are stored as states. With this new tool, the developer can now manage the Pivot Table states that are stored in the .UserState and .DeveloperState files of your project and libraries. The State File Manager gives you an overview of all states that are stored in a specific state file, from which you can delete states and/or jump to the pages on which the corresponding Pivot Tables are located.

Pivot Table Page Functions (FR1)

You can now specify a string parameter for the Pivot Table property Specific State Name (on the General tab). By changing the value of this string parameter, you can e.g. store several states for a single Pivot Table. To support you in saving, loading and deleting these states to/from the state files, three new page functions have been added:

PivotTableSaveState
PivotTableReloadState
PivotTableDeleteState

The Pivot Table example has been extended with a library that uses these new functions. It includes a right-mouse menu that can be assigned to a Pivot Table, after which the user can save, load, or delete states for that Pivot Table. You can include this library in your own project as well.

Coordinates of Page Objects (FR1)

When you select one or more page objects on a page in edit mode, the object coordinates, dimensions and type of object are displayed in the status bar. This further simplifies the alignment of your page objects, especially when these objects are located on different pages.

Text Representation (FR1)

To provide easier insight in a model, the possibility to look at a text file format of (part of) your model is now also available from the View windows. Via the Text Representation submenu in the right-mouse menu and View menu in the menu bar and associated short-cut keys, you can view either the selected nodes (Ctrl + t), or the complete model (Ctrl + Shift + t) in its text representation. The new Text Representation submenu has replaced the View Flat Model menu item in the Model Explorer.

AIMMSpack Location (FR1)

The AIMMSpack is a convenient file format to pack all related files into a single file for distribution. When extracting a .aimmspack file, you can now directly select the current folder as the target location. This allows you to keep the extracted project close to the location of the .aimmspack file.

Database Tracing (FR2)

The database communication of AIMMS can now be traced to one or more files. This tracing option allows you to see what exact statements AIMMS sends to a data source. This can be very helpful during the debugging of your database communication. Tracing is done on:

read statements
write statements
SQLDirect statements
transaction statements
stored procedure calls

In the Transport Model example that comes with the AIMMS installation this database tracing functionality is illustrated.

Assertions in the Pivot Table (FR2)

In almost all modeling applications, it is important to check the validity of input data prior to its use. To provide you with a mechanism to implement data validity checks, AIMMS already offered a special ASSERTION data type. With it, you can easily specify and verify logical conditions for all elements in a particular domain, and take appropriate action when you find an inconsistency. It is now also possible to use this Assertion functionality in the Pivot Table.

In the Pivot Table example that comes with the AIMMS installation this Assertion functionality is illustrated.

Installation-free AIMMS Viewer (FR2)

The AIMMS Viewer is now also available as an executable file that requires no installation at all. This makes it very easy to share your AIMMS projects’ results with e.g. managers or colleagues, who may not have an AIMMS license and/or administrator rights, thus making your communication more effective.

We plan to offer Installation-free executables of AIMMS (32-bit Windows) in the near future as well.

Some restrictions apply in the installation-free AIMMS versions. See this page for more details.

Bound analysis based on selection (FR2)

You can now restrict the Bound Analysis report in the Math Program Inspector to selected variables and constraints. This allows you to see the results of the Bound Analysis for a specific set of variables and constraints.

CPLEX 12.1 (FR2)

AIMMS 3.10 FR2 supports the new CPLEX solver version, CPLEX 12.1. This version includes improvements in the performance of solving MIP problems and the Barrier algorithm. Furthermore, parallel algorithms in CPLEX 12.1 are now included as a standard (i.e. no additional charge). If your license allows you to use CPLEX 12.1 (i.e. you have a maintained license), you need to update your license files after which you can use CPLEX 12.1. You can update your license via the Tools menu: License – License Configuration - Update.

Circle Packing example (FR2)

A new example in the area of ‘object packing’ has been added to the AIMMS installation: the Circle Packing example. This example handles the mathematical problems in which

identical circles (with an unknown, maximized radius) are to be packed into the unit square or the unit circle, or
an arbitrary collection of circles in an optimized circle with minimal radius (see picture).

To solve object packing problems numerically, you often need nonlinear optimization tools. In case of the circle packing listed above, you have to handle non-convex models. For this, the global solver LGO is a suitable solver. We recommend having solver LGO installed in AIMMS before running this example.

Support for Windows 7 (FR2)

AIMMS 3.10 FR2 has been tested on the latest available beta versions of Windows 7. Future AIMMS 3.10 releases will be supported on Windows 7 as soon as Microsoft officially releases it. By extending the support for AIMMS to more computing platforms and updating the support for existing platforms, you are able to benefit from improved hardware and operating system architectures.

Installation-free AIMMS (FR3)

AIMMS itself is now available as an executable file that requires no installation at all (for 32-bit Windows), similar to the Installation-free AIMMS Viewer that we already released with AIMMS 3.10 FR2. This installation-free AIMMS makes it very easy to run AIMMS without the need for administrator rights, for example when you’re deploying your application to end-users. You can even deploy AIMMS plus your application in a single installation-free package. These installation-free versions of AIMMS also make it easy to run different Software Updates of AIMMS next to each other.

Some restrictions apply in the installation-free AIMMS versions. See this page for more details.

Gurobi 2.0 (FR3)

AIMMS 3.10 FR3 supports the new Gurobi solver version, Gurobi 2.0. This version includes significant improvements in MIP performance (for difficult models, Gurobi 2.0 is roughly four times as fast as Gurobi 1.1), simplex performance (the new dual simplex optimizer is roughly twice as fast as Gurobi 1.1) and parallel MIP performance. Gurobi 2 allows you to store MIP nodes on disk and thus solve much larger MIP models. Gurobi 2.0 is also available in the AIMMS 3.9 series, starting with AIMMS 3.9.4.

Error Handling (FR3)

To increase your control over AIMMS applications in deployment to end-users, we have added extensive error handling functionality to the AIMMS language. This language extension allows the model builder

to tune the error reporting to the end-user by developing a global error handling procedure,
to implement “continue upon failure” by handling errors occurring in a selected block of statements,
to raise application specific warning and errors,
to catch errors issued by an intrinsic AIMMS procedure without having to test the return code of each procedure call,
to control the amount of warnings issued by AIMMS based on their seriousness.

Interrupting Slow Statements (FR3)

In order to allow you to interrupt a long running AIMMS task, the tool AimmsInterrupt.exe can be used besides the existing key-combination Ctrl+Shift+S. This new tool is more powerful than the key-combination, because it is also able to interrupt a long running statement, definition evaluation or generation of a constraint. This tool will be available from the AIMMS submenu in the Windows Start – All Programs menu. Upon startup, it will place itself in the system tray. By right-clicking the AIMMS icon in the system tray, you'll obtain a menu of running AIMMS instances that can be interrupted.

Warnings (FR3)

Two new warnings have been added to the AIMMS compiler and execution engine in order to ease the tuning of an application:

Warning unused index: An index in an iterative operator but not in an expression leads to unnecessary computations. An index in the index domain of a constraint but not used in the definition leads to duplicate rows.
Warning duplicate column/row: Besides requiring additional memory, duplicate columns and rows lead to non-unique solutions / shadow prices respectively.

New Procedures (FR3)

We have added three new procedures to AIMMS to facilitate data handling and exchange:

CloneElement: This procedure copies all data associated with a particular element to another (new) element.
DirectoryGetFiles: This procedure retrieves the names of the files in a given directory, optionally including the files in all subdirectories.
DirectoryGetSubdirectories: This procedure reads the directory structure of a given directory, optionally including all subdirectories.

Math Program Inspector: IIS support for MIP (FR3)

The AIMMS math program inspector (MPI) offers various tools to investigate causes of infeasibility, including finding an irreducible inconsistent system (IIS): a subset of constraints and variable bounds that contains an infeasibility. If at least one of the constraints or variable bounds in the IIS is removed, that particular infeasibility is resolved. The MPI could already find an IIS for LP models, and can now also find an IIS for MIP models with an infeasible LP relaxation.

Hide Y2-axis, use Y-scale (FR3)

In 2D Chart objects, it is now possible to hide the Y2-axis and still show its data, using the same scale as the Y1-axis. This can be done by setting the new property Hide axis, use Y-scale at the Y2-axis tab. This property allows you to hide the Y2-axis, but still display its associated data using a different chart type. You might want to use this if the value range of your Y-axis data and your Y2-axis data are quite close to each other, making a separate Y2-axis superfluous.

Tag names for tabbed/indexed page objects (FR3)

PageGetFocus now returns a tag that includes the path of Indexed Page or Tabbed Page objects in which the focus page object is contained. With this extended tag, you can now reference any page object within an Indexed Page or Tabbed Page object when using any of the page functions that have a tag as input. This allows you e.g. to save and load Pivot Table states separately for each page in an Indexed Page or Tabbed Page object.

Pivot Table: Grid Focus Indicator (FR3)

In the row and column areas of a Pivot Table, you can now show indicators for the focus cell in the grid area. Such an indicator consists of a different background color, text color and/or font. It is applied to the leaf node element in the row and/or column area that corresponds with the selected cell in the grid area, as you can see in the picture. The indicator properties can be specified via the Pivot Table properties dialog box, on the Row and/or Column Area tabs in the Grid Focus Indicator section.

Previous releases contain the following new features:

Read on:

New Features AIMMS 3.10, AIMMS 3.11 FR