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Design-Ease 7.0
What's new in Design-Ease 7.0
Highlights
- Numerical and graphical optimisation: These
popular Design-Expert features are now included in Design-Ease.
- Pareto chart of t-values of effects: Quickly see the
vital few effects relative to the trivial many from two-level factorial
experiments.
- New “Color By” option: Color-code points on
graphs according to the level of another factor—a great way to incorporate
another piece of information into a graph.
- Right-click on any response cell and “ignore” it: This
feature allows you to ignore a response data point without having to ignore the
entire row.
- “Screen tips”: Press the new tips button for
enlightenment on the current screen—this is especially helpful for novice
users.
- 3D surface plots for categorical factors: See
colored bars towering above others where effects are greatest.
- “Min Run Res IV” (two-level factorial) designs
for 5 to 50 factors: Screen main effects with maximum efficiency in terms of
experimental runs.
- “Min-Run Res V” designs for 6 to 31 factors:
Resolve two-factor interactions (2FI's) in the least runs possible while
maintaining a balance in low versus high levels.
- Two-level fractional factorials for up to 512
runs and 21 factors: Build bigger designs than ever-before possible.
- On plots of effects simply draw a box around the
ones you want selected for your model: This is much easier than clicking each
one with your mouse.
- Crosshairs window: Predict your response at any
place in the response surface plot.
- Full-color contour and 3D surface plots: Graduated or
banded colorisation adds life to reports and presentations.
- Magnification feature: An incredible tool for
expanding a mixture graph that is originally a small sliver and difficult to
interpret.
- Add blocks D-optimally: Automatically add blocks
to an existing design.
- Points on 3D graphs: See "lollipops"
protruding from surfaces where actual responses were collected.
- Row(s) in the design layout are highlighted when
point(s) are selected on the diagnostics: The highlighting feature makes
identification of problematic data much easier.
New Design Creation
-
Design-builder updates resolution of two-level
fractional factorials when the number of blocks is changed: Immediately see how
segmenting a design might reduce its ability to resolve effects.
- Block names are now entered during the design
build: Identify how you will break up your experiment, for example by specific
shift, material lot or the like.
- User-defined base factors for design generators:
You have more flexibility to customise fractional factorial designs.
- Expanded D-optimal capabilities—impose balance
penalty, force categoric balance: This feature helps users equalise the number
of treatments.
- Coordinate Exchange capability for D-optimal
designs: Avoid the arbitrary nature of designs constructed from candidate point
sets.
- In General or Factorial D-optimal designs,
categorical factors can be specified as either nominal or ordinal (orthogonal
polynomial contrasts): This affects the layout of analysis of variance (ANOVA).
New Design Augmentation Tools
-
“Semifold”: In only half the runs needed by a
normal foldover, augment Res IV designs to resolve specified 2FI's aliased in
the original block of runs.
- Add center points, blocks and replicates without
rebuilding the design: This will be a real time-saver.
New Analysis Capability
-
From Alias List, Pareto Chart or Effects Plots
views, right-click on effects to show aliases: Never lose sight of what really
is being measured in fractional-factorial designs.
- Select alternative aliased effects: Choose what
you think makes most sense based on your subject-matter knowledge.
- Backward stepwise regression is now applicable
to factorial designs: This is useful for quickly analysing general
(categorical) factorials.
- Means and standard deviations for all
experimental inputs (factors) and outputs (responses) are added to the Design
Summary screen: This provides a handy assessment of your system.
- The user can define their preference for sums of
squares calculations for both numeric and categoric factors to be sequential,
classical, or partial: These distinctions are important for statisticians who
want to do ANOVA in specific ways.
New Diagnostics Capability
-
DFFITS: Spot influential runs via this deletion
diagnostic that measures difference in fits when any given response is removed
from the dataset.
- DFBETAS: See from this deletion diagnostic how
model terms change due to an influential run.
Updated Graphics
-
Grid lines on contour plots: See more readily
what the coordinates are at any given point.
- Select the details printed on flags planted on
contour plots: As a user you now can control this feature.
- Confidence bands on one-factor plots: Get a good
feel for the uncertainty in a predicted response as a function of the factor
level.
- Color-codes for positive versus negative
effects: Assess plus or minus impacts on half-normal and Pareto plots.
- Smart tic marks: Get more-reasonably rounded
settings straight off.
Improved User Interface
-
Export the graph to a file: Save the graph as an
enhanced metafile (.emf) that can be inserted as a picture from file to
Microsoft Word and the like.
- Set row status to normal, ignore or highlight:
This allows users control over their design matrix.
More Options for Design Evaluation
-
Annotation option on reports: This will be a
boon to those who may be unfamiliar with all the esoteric statistics needed for
design evaluation.
- Customisable design evaluation content and power levels:
Use the OPTIONS button to select which statistics to display, specific power
levels to report, and whether to display the standard error or variance on the
graph (with the option to scale by N—the number of runs in the design).
- Specify model terms to ignore so they don’t display in
the alias list: For example, don’t bother showing interactions of four or more
factors.
- Evaluation can be done on either design or a particular
response: Shows the effect when data is missing from a specific response, but
not all responses.
Expanded Help
-
Tutorial movies: See Flash demo’s of features
via Screen Tips—a very effective way to show how to navigate through the
software.
- Internet links: These are helpful connections to
further information.
New Import/Export Tools
-
XML (eXtensible Markup Language) capability: Export
design files or reports in viewable format that can be manipulated for further
processing (The XML tool also allows import of designs created externally).