OpenMDAO is proud to announce the release of version 1.1.0 (Alpha). Many new enhancements were added, and bugfixes made. Those are detailed in the release notes. Of major importance, however, are a couple changes to our API that bear special mention here.
We’ve made one set of API changes to hopefully cut down on confusion due to overuse of the word ‘param’. The first thing we’ve done is change the name of ParamComp to IndepVarComp, because it’s really just a component that supplies one or more independent variables as outputs, and it has no parameters. ParamComp has been deprecated but will eventually be removed. Secondly, we changed the names of some Driver methods, replacing param with desvar, which is short for ‘design variable’. So set_param is now set_desvar, get_params is now get_desvars, and add_param is now add_desvar.
The other set of API changes refers to ConstraintComp. Specifically, the ConstraintComp is going away. We have a new interface for adding constraints. You still use the add_constraint method, but now you specify an “upper” or “lower” bounds (or “equals” for equality constraints.)
e.g. driver.add_constraint(‘(var_name)’, lower=xxx, upper=xxx, equals=xxxx).
This API change enabled us to easily support double-sided constraints, which SNOPT can use.
We apologize for any inconvenience that these API changes may cause.
