OpenMDAO / Aviary

NASA's aircraft analysis, design, and optimization tool
https://openmdao.github.io/Aviary/
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Input Listing Tool #377

Open jkirk5 opened 3 days ago

jkirk5 commented 3 days ago

Desired capability or behavior.

from @jdgratz10: Given the complex and customizable nature of Aviary models, the user needs a way that they can see a list of what input variables are required for their specific configuration, and which input variables are optional.

At first glance, a utility that lists all the unconnected inputs as required and the connected inputs as optional (via overriding) seems helpful. However, it would also be helpful for the user to have an idea of what minimal set is required. If we could develop some sort of tool that would trace through the code and identify inputs which are only ever used to calculate unconnected outputs, we could provide the user with a list of these inputs as well as the corresponding outputs they influence. Then, if the user did not care about those unconnected outputs, they could decide to simply not set the related inputs.

One caveat here will be that we will need to make sure to filter out outputs that are not technically connected anywhere but are used as constraints or objectives.

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

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Associated Bug Report

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jkirk5 commented 3 days ago

This can get started with a simple docs page that has a manual list of required inputs for our built-in Aviary components, which could be later expanded into a utility that combines those tables for all the subsystems the user is actually using, before we get started with an automated tool