2. Experiment Workspace

The following section introduces the user with the idea of a workspace. Taking the concept from Programming IDEs as Eclipse or NetBeans, MLC comes with the concept of a workspace which is a form of group experiments. The workspace its just a folder where projects are stored. A workspace allowed the user to switch between working directories, gathering experiments which have a correlation among each other.

Workspace Initialization

The first time MLC is executed, a DialogBox will be displayed asking for the location of the workspace directory. It is mandatory to set a workspace to continue, so the user will have to take into consideration that if not workspace is set the application will finish and ask for a workspace the next time that it is executed

Workspace Configuration

Once the user has configurated a workspace, the MLC Manager screen will be displayed (This window is explained in detail in the following section). In this screen a menu is available to change the workspace to another location. The user will find this menu in the upper left part of the window, with the name MLC -> Edit Workspace Location as is illustrated in the image below

Experiments Manipulation

The picture below shows the main window of the MLC Manager. The manager contains lots of options to manipulate experiments created in any workspace. When an experiment is selected, information about the last execution is displayed in the right part of the MLC Manager as is show in the picture:

• Name: Name of the experiment selected
• Generations: Amount of generations that have been evolved
• Individuals: Amount of Individuals created. Take into consideration that an Individual can appear in more than one generation
• Individuals Per Generation: Amount of Individuals in every generation. This value is chosen at the beginning of an experiment.
• Best Individual ID: Identifier in the database of the best Individual in the last generation evolved
• Best Individual Value: Mathematical expression of the last generation's best individual. This is maybe the most valuable parameter to be shown since it gives the user the idea of the result of the experiment selected

A description about every command available is given below:

• Create: Creates a new experiment with the Base Experiment scripts as a default. The application validates if the name of the project already exists in the actual workspace.
• Remove: Removes the experiment selected. The application ask for the user confirmation before taking this action.
• Open: Opens the experiment selected. A new window is opened (for more information about how to manipulate an experiment, please go to the following section. The user ought to take into consideration that only one experiment at the time can be opened.
• Clone: Creates a copy of the experiment selected. A dialog box will be displayed where the user will have to insert the name of the cloned experiment. The application also checks for name duplication before accepting the new name.
• Rename: This option changes the name of the experiment selected. The application also checks for name duplication before accepting the new name
• Export: This option lets the user store an experiment into a single file (with extension .mlc). A Folder Dialog Box is opened when the option is clicked which lets the user choose the destination folder of the exported experiment. For more information about an experiment structure please refer to the following section
• Import: This option loads a previous exported experiment to the current workspace. A Folder Dialog Box is opened when the option is clocked which lets the user choose the experiment to be imported in the file system. Only files with the .mlc extensions are allowed to be imported