I recently found out that some users do not know that the McCarl Guide is a substantial update and expansion on the old (vintage 1995 with limited updates to 1998 and 2001 GAMS User Guide). Actually I think the older User guide should be retired to the bookshelf of history but it appears in the IDE as if it is the definitive reference guide. I recently updated the McCarl Guide to be compatible with version 22.2 of GAMS and Paul van der Eijk at GAMS worked to put it in a help system form where the links in the pdf files work. I rewrote a set of notes I use in classes on using the McCarl Guide. This document is available with all new GAMS systems and a pdf copy is available without the examples.
I was recently teaching a class and my automated spreadsheet crashed (this is an example of GAMS being automatically used from a spreadsheet as discussed in the McCarl Guide within the section entitled Controlling GAMS from External Programs in the sub section on Excel spreadsheet in charge). The problem was that GAMS had moved the location of the GAMSIDE ini file (that I was reading to find the location of GAMS on the computer) from c:\Program Files\GAMS21.x to My Documents\gamsdir and my program could not find it. Erwin Kalvelagen helped me with this providing Visual Basic code that looks in both places and installing it into the spreadsheet. The resultant spreadsheet and supporting files are downloadable.
The latest version of the IDE contains a list file navigation window called a LXI file. It is a navigation window that opens with a LST file on the left hand side of the IDE and contains clickable and expandable links to places in the output like the output of each and every display statement. For details see the Running Jobs with GAMS and the GAMS IDE section of the latest McCarl Guide (version 22.2) in the latest IDE or here.
Tom Rutherford has some new utilities for
I teach an Advanced GAMS class August 14-17, 2006 in the Colorado mountains at Frisco (near Breckenridge). The course covers such diverse topics as links to other programs like spreadsheets, speeding up GAMS, scaling, debugging, improving output and advanced basis use along with many other topics.
Further information and other courses are listed on http://www.gams.com/courses.htm.
This newsletter is not a product of GAMS Corporation although it is distributed with their cooperation.
July 27, 2006