Screenshots of Direct Optimizer in action:

Below is the main screen on top of an Excel sheet:

Here the user has already selected the Target cell by first clicking the Target cell: button, and then clicking the red cell D1 from the sheet with his mouse. Then he clicked the Guess button so that the variables to be optimized were automatically defined.

Next we can see the window which opens when the user presses Help button on the main screen:

A new help-window opens (even during the computation) offering various helpful information about Direct Optimizer.

Next we can see the window which opens when the user presses Options button on the main screen:

Here we can set the options for the Hooke-Jeeves algorithm, and other Direct Optimizer settings. The default values have been chosen so that the user should not need to change these settings often. Direct Optimizer remembers changes to these settings (they are saved when the user presses the Exit-button on the main screen).

Next we'll take a look at the window which opens when the user presses Randomize button on the main screen:

Here we can vary the contents of the variable cells, either with a small perturbation to the current values, or selectecting new random values from a defined interval. Intervals can be defined either based on the bounds on the variables, or by selecting them here.

Next we'll see Direct Optimizer in action by looking at the window which opens when the user presses Solve on the main screen:

Various information about the status of computation is shown here.

When the computation is ready, we are taken to the Result of Computation screen:

Selected information collected during the computation is shown here. The variable cells are now in their optimum values.