What’sBest! 20 Excel Add-In – New Features:  

1)  General:

• Now support latest Excel functions such as  NORM.DIST, BINOM.DIST, POISSON.DIST, LOGNORM.DIST, etc.
• Improved support of the  WBALLDIFF constraint to better handle accidental fractional values. 
• More concise Model/Solution Summary Report to help understanding of solutions to big models. 
• Time-to-Best Solution now displayed in solve Status Report. 
• More concise listing of non default options in Status Report. 

2) LP (Linear Program) Solvers:

• New enhancements to simplex solvers improve the average performance on large instances by 25-30%. 

3) MIP (Mixed Integer Program) Solvers:  

• New heuristics at root node help find good quality solutions for previously unsolvable instances. 
• Enhancements in re-optimizations lead to optimality 15-20% faster compared to the previous version. 
• From our standard benchmark suite, the number of models solved to optimality within 2 hrs increased by 20% compared to the previous version. 

4) NLP (Nonlinear Program) Solvers: 

• Interface to open source NLOPT solver suite. 
• Improved performance due to better recovery strategies on difficult nonlinear problems. 
• Improved Mult-Start solver based on entropy maximization. 
• Global solver solution path repeatability improved. 
• Global solver has improved ability to
  convert nonlinear models to equivalent linear models,
  recognize and substitute out common terms. 
• Global solver has better bound tightening and tighter linear relaxations.

5) Interfaces:

• Improved support for external solvers such as COPT, Coin/CLP, Highs.