Slides and streaming videos for several introductory Dakota training topics are now available. The videos are recordings of live training conducted internally at Sandia and feature:

• Slide presentations and lectures by Dakota team members
• Live demos of Dakota
• Interaction with trainees
• Dakota exercises that provide hands-on experience with using the Reference Manual, creating input files, interfacing simulations with Dakota, interpreting Dakota output, and more

Viewers may follow along with the exercises by downloading the materials for each module. The exercises were created for use with Dakota 6.3 on OS X or Linux, but users of slightly different versions of Dakota (6.0 or greater) and Windows users of Dakota will encounter few difficulties.

Exercises in the Model Characterization and Sensitivity Analysis modules make use of plotting tools created specially for the training. Python 2.7 and the matplotlib and pandas libraries are required by the tools. Installing either Anaconda or Canopy is a convenient way to satisfy these requirements.

Updates:

• Updated (2016) materials and presentations can be downloaded here, but they may not match those used in the videos.
• Cantilever beam errata: In the content below (slides and simulation drivers), the stress equation for the cantilever beam incorrectly has a fixed length L = 100. Corrected cantilever beam slide. The analysis driver is corrected in versions of Dakota newer than 2019-09-05. Thanks to Anjali Sandip for reporting.