Rocscience Downloads - Slide 3.0 Update History

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RocNews Spring 2008 is here!

Version 3.046

1.	Compute: Undrained strength functions that are a function of depth and immediately above the lower boundary of the model would not give the correct shear strength results when used with composite surfaces. The strength at the top of the material was being used for the strength.
2.	Modeler: Materials dialog would reassign unit weight and water table info if the user changed the strength model.

Version 3.045

1.	Compute: In extremely rare circumstances, models with soils that have different unit weights above and below the water table would generate incorrect slices. This was obvious if you viewed the slices and slice data.
2.	Compute: Models with zero strength materials and a water table that cut through the material (not at the top of the material) would sometimes compute incorrect slice data.
3.	Compute: The precise centroid of triangular loads is now computed. The load is now applied through this centroid yielding more accurate results for models with triangular loads.
4.	Compute: Can now open more files for batch processing.
5.	Modeler: Materials dialog would reassign unit weight and water table info if the user changed the strength model.

Version 3.044

1.	Compute: Triangular loads were not being computed correctly. The loads at the two ends were being switched.

Version 3.043

1.	Compute: Seismic accelerations were being applied to ponded water. This is no longer the case.
2.	Compute: In cases where the unit weight above and below the water table were different, results were not being calculated for certain centers. This has been fixed.
3.	Compute: Completely submerged slopes with a depth of water greater than 20 units were not being calculated correctly. The weight of water was only due to 20 units of cover while the pore pressures were correct.
4.	All: New Windows XP style menus under windows XP.
5.	Interpret: When filter surfaces was used with "All Circles" and the setting: "Display X surfaces with the lowest factors of safety", the program would not always display the correct surfaces. This problem only occurred when filtering "All Circles", filtering "Minimum Surfaces" was not affected.

Version 3.042

If a model has ponded water which exists over the left most slope limit and the limit is at the left most vertex of your model then a circle that passes through this left most vertex will not contain the lateral thrust due to the ponded water. This will result in a factor of safety which is much less than it actually is.

Version 3.041

1.	Printer logic has been changed. Printers are now set up just before printing. This isolates a problem with printing to some HP printers due to a HP driver bug.

Version 3.04

1.	Automatic update technology added. Customers with a web connection will automatically be notified and allowed to update when a new minor version is released.
2.	A bug with circular search focuses being used with non-circular searches is fixed .
3.	A new splash screen.
4.	Nodelocking now possible.

Version 3.03

1.	Modeler: A single line segment could not be used to define a non-circular failure surface. This is fixed.
2.	Modeler: Improved the way single non-circular failure surfaces are defined. The surface is now intersected properly with the exterior boundary.
3.	Resource modifications in the Model, Compute, and Interpret modules to improve overall stability.

Version 3.026

1.	Modeler: Fixed a problem with reading some XSTABL files.
2.	Compute: A model with a mixture of materials, some with different unit weights below the water table and some materials that didn't, could cause problems with the slice generation.

Version 3.024/3.025

1.	Modeler: More work on the vertex snapping.

Version 3.023

1.	Modeler: Vertex snapping has been improved. You can now snap directly to a line segment as well as a vertex.
2.	Modeler: When moving a boundary, if the base point and new point are both typed in without moving the mouse a memory not initialized error could occur resulting in a crash.
3.	We've gone back to the old 6.0 runtime dll's which we believe were more stable.

Version 3.022

1.	Modeler: Entry of angle line loads didn't work correctly.
2.	Modeler: Reading complicated files is a lot faster.
3.	Modeler: Data file is now exactly the same after reading and re-writing the file.
4.	Modeler: Undo information is now saved after an Assign material.
5.	Modeler: Better DXF reading and error management.
6.	Modeler: When entering tractions using only the keyboard the program would sometimes crash.
7.	Modeler: Version information is now written to the data files.
8.	Modeler: Added color coding to the materials dialogs for easier identification of materials.
9.	Compute: The way ponded water is handled has been improved.
10.	Compute: Bug fix for infinite strength materials which intersect the slope surface. Sometimes the program would crash.
11.	Compute: Focus objects now check for the surface actually passing through them. Under certain circumstances (multiple slope intersection), the analyzed surface would not pass through the focus object although the circle would.

Version 3.021

1.	Interpret: Pressing Ctrl-S would inadvertently delete the .sli input file.
2.	Interpret: Filter surfaces now automatically turns on display of all surfaces. Previously, if neither min or all surfaces was not toggled on, filtering for a minimum number of surfaces would display nothing. This was confusing so has been changed.
3.	Compute: If the path to an input file was greater than 100 characters then compute would not find the file.
4.	Model: A distributed load could not have a value > 1000 KN/m
5.	Model: The graphical size of the loads are now scaled differently. Distributed and Line loads are independently scaled.
6.	Model: A number of small bug fixes associated with uninitialized memory were fixed. Under certain situations these might have caused the program to abort.

Version 3.02

1.	Compute: Speed increase. The analysis phase is now 2 to 5 times faster due to changes in storage methods (see 2 below) and optimizations to the compute engine.
2.	Changed the way data is stored. In previous versions, all slice data was stored for every surface creating huge unmanageable files for analyses with large number of surfaces. This also slowed down the program. Now the program has a toggle in the Project Settings between a standard data mode and a maximum data mode. Standard saves slice data only for the global minimum while Maximum stores slice data for all surfaces (same as previous versions).
3.	Model: A filter for reverse curvature surfaces has been added. See the Surface Options dialog for circular grid searches.
4.	Model: Number of materials and anchors has been increased from 20 to unlimited. See the Project Settings dialog.
5.	Model: New material models for undrained soils. Can now define undrained cohesion as a function of depth. See the Define Materials dialog.
6.	Model: New material model. Can now define shear strength as a function of overburden pressure. See the Define Materials dialog.
7.	Model: Can now import an image file of a scale drawing of the slope and use it as a background for sketching your slope. See the View->Image option.
8.	Interpret: The infoviewer now lists the number of valid / invalid surfaces and better describes the error codes that occurred.
9.	Interpret: Can import image files as part of the annotation tools.
10.	Model: Default number of grid points for circular surfaces has been increased from approx. 100 to 400. For noncircular searches the default has been increased from 100 to 1000.
11.	Model: Pseudo-Random option for Path searches did not work. This has been fixed.
12.	Model: Undo/Redo now works for material properties definition.
13.	Model: Reset default slope now resets the slope limits as well.
14.	Interpret: Printing without previewing did not always center properly. This has been fixed.

Version 3.011

1.	Model: Escaping from a vertex move of the water table caused the program to crash. Fixed.
2.	Model: You could not turn vertex snap off when moving a grid. The wrong right click menu would come up. Fixed.
3.	Model: When assigning a material the slope limits would be reset. This is no longer the case.
4.	Model / Interpret: Rulers now show metric or imperial divisions.
5.	Interpret: Axes have been improved.
6.	Interpret: SF at grid points no longer scales.
7.	Compute: Anchors were not being modeled correctly for Lowe-Karafiath, GLE and Spencer. The horizontal component of the anchor force for right to left slopes was not in the correct direction.
8.	Compute: Improvements to the iteration scheme for Spencer and GLE resulting in faster and more reliable convergence.

Version 3.01

1.	Model: Improved calculation of default slope limits.
2.	Model: Reading Tension Cracks, Water Tables, Piezos and bolts via the DXF In option caused a reset of the materials. It now maintains the material definition.
3.	Model: Exporting Tension cracks through DXF would sometimes split them. When read back in they would cause problems. The modeler will now only read the first tension crack polyline it finds in the file.
4.	Model: Adding single centers now generates a warning instead of an error for suspect (possibly invalid) circular surfaces. As a result you can now enter circular surfaces with multiple slope intersections.
5.	Compute: A memory bug was fixed. This occurred very rarely (# intersections on exterior boundary>72) and resulted in a crash or obvious incorrect results.
6.	Compute: Improved intersection calculation for circular surfaces that intersected the slope geometry many times.
7.	Compute: Refined the minimum slice width allowed. As a result, smaller surfaces can now be computed.
8.	Compute: Multiple slope limits now properly filter surfaces outside the valid range. Better extent calculation is also done for this case.
9.	Compute: Improved intersection logic for reverse curvature circular surfaces. These are circles where the elevation of the center is below the upper slope intersection point.
10.	Interpret: Text sizing has now been removed. The text stays the same size and does not disappear when zoomed out.
11.	Interpret: Piezo lines and water pressure grid points were being hidden by the soil geometry. This has been fixed.
12.	Interpret: Incorrect numbering of Piezo lines has been fixed.
13.	Interpret: The "Query Invalid" option toggle is now off by default. Right click during query to turn it on.
14.	Interpret: Can now remove query tool-tip text during a query. Right click and toggle off the Query->Text option.

Version 3.003

1.	Compute: Improved intersection calculation with infinite strength materials.
2.	Model: Grid and vertex snap now work with adding point focus objects.
3.	Model: Reading material boundaries from a DXF file without the existence of an external boundary crashed the program. An error message is now generated and the program does not crash.

Version 3.002

1.	Compute: A bug with percentage filled tension cracks was fixed.
2.	Compute: Performance improvements were made to the Compute engine. The engine is now 3 times faster.
3.	Interpret: Chart properties were improved. (and minimum x value bug is fixed)
4.	Interpret: Dismissing the contour dialog by pressing esc could make it not come up again. Fixed.
5.	Interpret: Query Slice Data is now in the pop-up menu when you right-click on queries.
6.	Interpret: Query and Graph option is now in the pop-up menu when you right-click on globals.
7.	Interpret: SF Text for queries no longer scales with the size of the slope.
8.	Interpret: Contours could overlap the slope. Fixed.

Version 3.001

1.	Compute: A bug when you have a tension crack zone and a material line that intersects a circle to the right of the tension crack intersection is fixed.
2.	Compute: The point focus search entity now works.
3.	Modeler: The grid search can now be limited using a minimum elevation as in the Path Search.

Version 3.000 (from beta 1)

1.	Hoek-Brown and Generalized Hoek-Brown Soil models added.
2.	Random Non-Circular Path search added.
3.	Better support for Geo-Slope and XSTABL files.
4.	Can now Export any of the analysis data from the Interpreter for easy import into MS Excel or any other spreadsheet.
5.	Finished On-Line Help. Added an On-Line Reference Manual. Updated Tutorial Manual.
6.	Lots of small bug fixes and layout improvements.

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Last Updated June 27, 2008