OpenMDAO/OpenMDAO-Framework — pull request #1546 by Kenneth-T-Moore (2013-12-20 23:01:46+00:00)
Title: Settings for user control of the gradient solution

All drivers now have a vartee called gradient_options. This vartree contains some options that allow for better control of the gradient calculation for each driver:

1. fd_form -- Choose forward, backward, central differencing
2. fd_step_size -- Change the global stepsize for finite difference. (in-variable declarations supercede this for that variable)
3. fd_step_type -- Choose relative or absolute.
4. force_fd -- Force this driver to finite difference the whole model with no fake finite differencing of subparts.
5. gmres_tolerance -- tolerance for GMRES (solves the system of equations to find the gradient)
6. gmres_maxiter -- maximum number of iteration for GMRES

Relative stepsizing for finite difference is a new capability as well. It steps by the current value of a variable multiplied by the stepsize. For small numbers (1.0e-4), it uses an absolute step instead.