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The Design Editor

Introducing the Design Editor

The Design Editor provides prebuilt standard designs to allow a user with a minimal knowledge of the subject to quickly create experiments. You can apply engineering knowledge to define variable ranges and apply constraints to exclude impractical points. You can increase modeling sophistication by altering optimality criteria, forcing or removing specific design points, and optimally augmenting existing designs with additional points.

There is a step-by-step guide to using the Design Editor in Tutorial: Design of Experiment in the Getting Started documentation.

Opening the Design Editor

You must first have a test plan before you can open the Design Editor.

  1. From the startup (project) view of the Model Browser, click New and select a one or two-stage test plan. See Project Level: Startup View and Test Plans in the Modeling section.

    You can design experiments at both stages, for local models and global models; for most two-stage models the global model is most appropriate for design of experiment.

  2. Before you design an experiment we recommend that you set up your input variables, by double-clicking the Inputs blocks on the test plan diagram. See Input Factor Setup.

    You can choose the number of inputs for your model and set up their names and definitions, then you can design an experiment to collect data. It is much easier to understand your design points if they are labeled with the factor names. Also, if you do not set up model inputs first, then you can only create designs for the default number of variables (one).

  3. If you want to use optimal designs, then the type of model you are going to use to fit the data is important, and you should choose a model type before opening the Design Editor. Double-click a model block in the test plan diagram to set up model types. Optimal designs are best for cases with high system knowledge, where previous studies have given confidence on the best type of model to be fitted, so in these cases you should pick your model type before designing an experiment. See Selecting Models to find out about model types in the Model-Based Calibration Toolbox product.

    If you have no idea what model you are going to fit, choose a space-filling design. Model type has no effect on designs that are space-filling or classical, so if you want to create these designs you can leave the model type at the default and open the Design Editor.

You can invoke the Design Editor in several ways from the Test Plan Level:

  1. First you must select the stage (first/local or second/global) for which you want to design an experiment. Click to select the appropriate model block in the test plan diagram.

  2. Right-click the model block and select Design Experiment.

    Alternatively, click the Design Experiment toolbar icon .

    You can also select TestPlan > Design Experiment.

For an existing design, View > Design Data also launches the Design Editor (also in the right-click menu on each Model block). This shows the selected data as a design.

Design Styles

The Design Editor provides the interface for building experimental designs. You can make three different styles of design: classical, space-filling, and optimal.

Classical designs (including full factorial) are very well researched and are suitable for simple regions (hypercube or sphere). See Creating a Classical Design.

Space-filling designs are better when there is low system knowledge. In cases where you are not sure what type of model is appropriate, and the constraints are uncertain, space-filling designs collect data in such as a way as to maximize coverage of the factors' ranges as quickly as possible. See Creating a Space-Filling Design.

Optimal designs are best for cases with high system knowledge, where previous studies have given confidence in the best type of model to be fitted, and the constraints of the system are well understood. See Creating an Optimal Design.

You can augment any design by optimally adding points. Working in this way allows new experiments to enhance the original, rather than simply being a second attempt to gain the necessary knowledge. See Adding and Editing Design Points.

Design Editor Displays

The following example shows the display after creating an optimal design.

When you first create or open a design, the main display area shows the default Design Table view of the design (see example above). All the views on the right show the design selected in the left tree (see The Design Tree). There is a context menu for the views on the right, available by right-clicking the title bars, in which you can change the view of the design to 1-D, 2-D, 3-D, 4-D, and Pairwise Projections, 2-D, and 3-D Constraint views, and the Table view (also under View menu). This menu also allows you to split the display either horizontally or vertically so that you simultaneously have two different views on the current design. The split can also be merged again. You can also use the toolbar buttons. After splitting, each view has the same functionality; that is, you can continue to split views until you have as many as you want. When you click a view, its title bar becomes blue to show it is the current active view. See Design Editor Toolbar and Menus for more information about how to change your display options.

The information pane, bottom left, displays pieces of information for the current design selected in the tree. The amount of information in this pane can change depending on what the design is capable of; for example, only certain models can support the optimal designs and only these can show current optimal values. You can also see this information and more by selecting File > Properties or using the context menu in the tree.

The Design Editor can display multiple design views at once, so while working on a design you can keep a table of design points open in one corner of the window, a 3-D projection of the constraints below it, and a 2-D, 3-D, or pairwise plot of the current design points as the main plot.

The following example shows several views in use at once.

The Design Tree

The currently available designs are displayed on the left in a tree structure.

The tree displays three pieces of information:

Design Editor Toolbar and Menus

File Menu

Edit Menu

View Menu

Design Menu

Tools Menu

Window Menu

This allows you to switch between the Model Browser and Design Editor windows.

Help Menu

As with everywhere in the toolbox, the Help menu provides access to general toolbox help and help specific to the current view. Here you can select MBC Help to browse all the toolbox help, Design Editor Help to go straight to the Designs documentation, or About MBC to see the current version number.

  


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