Dealing with complicated figures

Sometimes you will stumble on a figure that is quite challenging to draw, even for Geo-AID. In these cases, it's worth knowing a few tricks to guide Geo-AID through them.

When Geo-AID generates a figure, it does so with a certain amount of samples, over multiple cycles, until a certain condition (currently: average quality delta over the last x cycles goes below a certain value) is met. That's a lot of different generation parameters and all of them are modifiable.

  1. Sample count (-s or --samples option, 512 by default)

By modifying this parameter, you change how many different versions of a generation cycle are created. The higher the value, the more likely Geo-AID is to find the right spot for every point. It will, however, take more time, and it might make certain flaws of Geo-AID's generation more visible.

  1. Generation break average delta threshold (-d option, 0.0001 by default)

Lowering this makes Geo-AID go on with generation for a little longer, essentially postponing the moment it decides it won't really get much better.

  1. Count of last records used in calculating the average delta (-m option, 128 by default)

Increasing this makes Geo-AID take more of the last cycles into consideration when deciding whether to stop.

  1. Generation engine (-e or --engine, glide by default)

By default, Geo-AID uses glide as its optimization engine as it should generally perform better than rage. It might, however, be worth a try to switch the engine.

  1. Maximum adjustment per generation cycle (-a option, 0.5 by default)

This modifies how much can a single point/scalar be changed when adjusting for another cycle. Keep in mind that this is only a base for calculations. In reality, the amount of adjustment allowed depends on the given point's quality and is different between different workers to allow both big and small changes in the same generation cycle. This parameter only works with the Rage engine.

Usually, the most visible effect comes from increasing the sample count.

Ultimately the best way of increasing odds for Geo-AID is to write the script as well as you can, relying strongly on defining points with expressions. The golden rule is: the fewer rules, the better.