Why could a SCIPcopy model be infeasible a when original model is feasible? - optimization

Question

I'm new to SCIP, so I'm not sure if this is a bug or if I'm just doing something wrong.
I have a MIP instance that solves perfectly using SCIP, however when I try to solve a copy of the model SCIP says that it is infeasible. It seems to be more noticeable when presolve is turned off.
I'm using windows with the pre-built SCIP v3.2.0. The model only has binary and integer variables.
The following code outlines my attempt:
SCIP* _scip, subscip;
SCIPcreate(&_scip);
SCIPincludeDefaultPlugins(_scip);
SCIPcreateProbBasic(_scip, "interval_solver")); // create an empty problem
SCIPsetPresolving(_scip, SCIP_PARAMSETTING_OFF, true); //disable presolving
// build model (snipped)
SCIPsolve(_scip); // succeeds and gives feasible solution
SCIP_Bool valid = FALSE;
SCIPcreate(&subscip);
SCIPcopy(_scip, subscip, NULL, NULL, "1", TRUE, FALSE, TRUE, &valid);
SCIPsolve(subscip); // infeasible
Something that might be related (and seems weird to me) is that after solving the original problem (and getting a feasible solution), checking the solution reports an infeasible result. i.e.
SCIP_SOL* sol = SCIPgetBestSol(_scip);
SCIPcheckSol(_scip, sol, TRUE, TRUE, TRUE, TRUE, &valid);
gives:
solution value 1 violates bounds of <t_x71_(6,1275,6805)_(9,1275,6805)>[-0,0] by 1
Any ideas why this could be happening? Thanks!

Answer 1

Propagation in SCIP may take into account the best solution known so far and do reductions which are only valid for the problem of finding a solution better than this.
For example, if you have a minimization problem with n variables x_1,...,x_n with objective coefficients c_1,...,c_n >= 0 and already found a solution with x_1 = 1, x_2 = ... = x_n = 0, then propagation will globally fix x_1 to 0, because the objective of any solution with x_1 = 1 will be at least as large as the objective of the solution you already found.
This means that the solutions found so far may not be feasible anymore for the remaining problem (which looks for a strictly better solution).
In order to check the solution, you should check it in the original problem space, which you can do with SCIPcheckSolOrig().
Disabling presolving an propagation might help, but does not guarantee that the global presolved problem is not changed. Presolving in the LP solver should not be the problem, but might have changed the reported optimal LP solution (if there are multiple optima) and therefore caused a change in the solving process. This might have avoided your issue in this case, but probably by pure luck and the issue may still appear again on other instances. Moreover, the more features you disable, the more this will have a negative impact on your performance.
However, there is an easy solution to your problem: You can copy the original unchanged problem by using SCIPcopyOrig().

Answer 2

Some of the variable bounds were still being presolved. To fix the issue I needed to add:
SCIPsetBoolParam(_scip, "lp/presolving", FALSE);
This fixed most things, but the following also helped fix some 'check solution' issues:
SCIPsetIntParam(_scip, "propagating/maxrounds", 0);
SCIPsetIntParam(_scip, "propagating/maxroundsroot", 0);