Hi @Ai Ping.Yow!

LocalOpt.Cycles is not the number of cycles taken for optimization, it is the setting for the number of cycles. You can see this in line 5 of your example code:

LocalOpt.Cycles = ZOSAPI.Tools.Optimization.OptimizationCycles.Automatic

I suspect you are using Python 3.8 or older, together with Python.NET 2.5.2; in that case it makes sense that your code prints a 0.   ZOSAPI.Tools.Optimization.OptimizationCycles.Automatic  is the first element of the  ZOSAPI.Tools.Optimization.OptimizationCycles enum, so it has index 0; printing an enum value while using Python.NET 2.5.2 will print its index.

Looking at the documentation, I unfortunately don't see a way to get the number of cycles used for optimization.

Thank you chaasjes! Yep, I am using Python 3.7.9.

I also looked through the documentation and wasn’t able to find a way. In that case, I would just use the elapsed time instead for my work.

Thank you @MichaelH ! It works based on your suggestion 👍🏻 

MFvalue = []
print('Initial Merit Function:', LocalOpt.InitialMeritFunction)
initMF = LocalOpt.InitialMeritFunction
MFvalue.append(initMF)
t = time.time()
LocalOpt.Run()
while LocalOpt.IsRunning:
    currentValue = LocalOpt.CurrentMeritFunction
    if MFvalue[-1] != currentValue:
        print(f'Changed MF: {currentValue}')
        MFvalue.append(currentValue)
LocalOpt.WaitForCompletion()
print('Final Merit Function:', LocalOpt.CurrentMeritFunction)
finalMF = LocalOpt.InitialMeritFunction
LocalOpt.Close()
elapsed = time.time() - t # Get the elapsed time
print('Time elapsed: ' + str(round(elapsed,3)) + 's')
print(f'Cycles: {len(MFvalue)}')