Installation-free AIMMS

(Please note that the information on this page applies to both the Installation-free AIMMS and the Installation-free AIMMS Viewer. This is indicated by the use of the term 'AIMMS (Viewer)' throughout the page).

Previously, it was necessary to run an AIMMS (Viewer) installation on your computer before you were able to use the software. Only users with administrator permissions on their machine could do that installation. With AIMMS 3.10 Feature Release 3 (3.10 FR3), an Installation-free AIMMS is available (the Installation-free AIMMS Viewer was already introduced in 3.10 FR2). This gives users without administrator permissions the ability to run AIMMS or the AIMMS Viewer. Another benefit of the Installation-free AIMMS is that it allows you to run multiple sub-versions of the same AIMMS version next to each other. For instance, the Installation-free AIMMS allows you to run AIMMS 3.11 FR1 next to AIMMS 3.11 FR2. The Installation-free AIMMS (Viewer) is available for anyone with a Developer or an End-User license.

Restrictions

This Installation-free AIMMS (Viewer) currently has the following restrictions compared to the AIMMS (Viewer) version that does require an installation (this version is of course still available).

There is only a 32-bit (x86) Windows version of the Installation-free AIMMS (Viewer) available.
With the Installation-free AIMMS (Viewer), AIMMS runs as a virtual application and as a result of that, nothing of AIMMS (Viewer) is available outside this virtual application (the outside world is still available from the Installation-free AIMMS). Therefore, double clicking on the project file will not automatically start the Installation-free AIMMS (Viewer). With the installed AIMMS (Viewer) version, you can double-click on the .prj or .aimmspack file, after which the AIMMS (Viewer) is automatically started.
For the same reason as above, you cannot use the API, AIMMSCOM or Webservices to startup the Installation-free AIMMS. This includes the Excel Add-in, as that is based on AIMMSCOM. However, the Excel functions from the language can be used without any problem.
At this point, it is not possible to call AIMMS webservices or multi-agents from the Installation-free AIMMS, as this requires components to be started and available outside the virtual application.
If you have not installed a regular AIMMS version before, there is no write access to the directory in which the configuration, license and nodelock files are stored. So, instead, the Installation-free AIMMS will create the files in the user application area on your computer. By default, for Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003 this is the following directory:

C:\Documents and Settings\Application Data\ Paragon Decision Technology\AllUsers

On Windows Vista and Windows 7, this is by default in:

C:\Users\AppData\Roaming\Paragon Decision Technology\AllUsers

Features

In order to make working with the Installation-free AIMMS even easier, this AIMMS version also introduces a number of new features with the intention of overcoming some of the drawbacks of working with the Installation-free AIMMS (Viewer) as described above.

Special folder StartUpProject

If AIMMS starts in a folder that contains a folder named StartupProject, it will try to find and open a project file (*.prj *.aimmspack) that is located in that folder.

Special file .cmdargs

If AIMMS opens a project file (.prj or .aimmspack), it will look for a file with the same name as the project file, but with the extension .cmdargs, containing additional command line arguments. If found, AIMMS will take these command line arguments into account when opening.

New command line option --alluser-dir

If AIMMS is started with this command line argument, it will use the directory specified as the license directory instead of the standard directories. It will also create the necessary subfolders.

How to use the installation-free AIMMS (Viewer)

To start your project with the Installation-free AIMMS (Viewer), you can either

start AIMMS (Viewer) manually (by double clicking the .exe file) and open the .prj or .aimmspack file from the Start Page or File menu, or
you can create your own shortcut (see picture) using a target based on the location of your Installation-free AIMMS Viewer executable and your project. Something like:

C:\AimmsViewer.exe "C:\Projects\MyProject.prj"

start AIMMS (Viewer) manually from a location where a directory StartupProject exists that contains your project (for instance, MyProject.prj). Now, AIMMS will start MyProject.prj from that directory. Furthermore, if the StartupProject directory contains a file MyProject.cmdargs, those arguments will also be taken into account. A possible usage for that file is the new argument to control the license location. For example, if you have the following directory structure:

where the Installation-free AIMMS is located in the directory AIMMS and your AIMMS project and .cmdargs file are in the StartupProject directory and the .cmdargs file contains:

--alluser-dir "..\Local License"

Then double-clicking on the Installation-free AIMMS executable, will start AIMMS with your project and use the licenses from the Local License directory. This allows you to setup your Installation-free AIMMS and AIMMS project completely separate from the rest of your system