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Slide 5.0Update History


Version 5.035

1. Compute. Improved accuracy of the Ordinary/Fellenius method by introducing the Turnbull and Hvorslev 1967 method of writing the equations.
2. Compute. In some rare circumstances, ponded water would not extend past the default slope limits even though the water table would. As a result, lateral water forces due to ponded water would not be properly applied. Fixed.

Version 5.034

1. Compute: In rare cases, surfaces generated through material with different saturated and moist unit weights would not be computed. Fixed.

Version 5.033

1. Compute. If a failure surface intersects a tension crack, and a bolt passes through the vertical portion of the failure surface associated with the tension crack, the bolt had no effect on the factor of safety. The bolt was basically ignored. The bolt force is now added to the sytem of equations and will have an effect on the factor of safety.
2. Interpret. In some rare circumstances, compostite surfaces would be drawn incorrectly. They would pass through the bottom of the external boundary. Fixed. This had no effect on the results, the compute engine worked correctly.
3. Updated Help System.


Version 5.032

1. Fixed automatic geometry checking in Modeler. External boundary with overlapping segments was sometimes allowed to be entered by user. This could results in mysterious error messages later or even a crash of the application.
2. Updated technical support dialog.
3. Added new tutorials on tension cracks and groundwater flow through levees (#15 and #16).

Version 5.031

1. Interpreter. Fixed a problem with Favourite Text tool where lines and arrows would not show up after reading previously saved tools file.
2. Interpreter. Fixed problem where dotted lines on tools would print as solid lines.
3. Interpreter. In tools Format dialog added ability to select any line style for lines with thickness of more than 1 pixel.
4. Interpreter. Fixed a bug with orientation of discharge section arrows that was introduced in version 5.027. Depending on how they were drawn, some discharge sections would show flow in the opposite direction.


Version 5.030

1. New Anisotropic Linear strength model has been added.
2. Improved printing to Adobe Acrobat.
3. Modeler: Importing Slope/W files with more than 20 material properties would crash the program.
4. New Help system

Version 5.029

1. Interpreter: Zoom to Scale option was removed and replaced by Print to Scale. Scaling now works correctly for imperial units.
2. Interpreter: Added 4 options to control print out of the model: "Fit View" - default option which always fits everything visible inside the view window on to available printing area, "Fit Width" and "Fit Height" which fit width or height of the view into printing area, and "Print to Scale" - see below.
3. Interpreter: Added "Print to Scale" option which allows user to output model on paper to a certain scale. The scale can be optionally displayed on the print out (go to Page Setup to turn it on or off). Print to Scale option can be found under File -> Print Area & Scale -> Print to Scale menu or on the toolbar.
4. Interpreter: More options have been added to allow the user to save contour, legend and display options. A defaults button has been added to the contour and legend options dialogs to allow the user to save certain defaults.
5. Interpreter: The default type of data displayed from a groundwater analysis can now be set in the Groundwater tab of the display options.
6. Interpreter: Ruler now always has 10 divisions between major ticks for both imperial and metric unit system. Ruler spacing can be easily customized by right-clicking on the ruler.
7. Interpret: Added options to draw Legend and Ruler in black and white for better looking screenshots.
8. Interpret: Transparency and alpha-blending can now be applied to any type of imported image and not just bmp.
9. Modeler/Interpret: Improved window tabs for multiple opened files. Tabs now automatically shrink to fit more tabs in a single row.
10. Modeler/Interpret: Page Setup dialog was simplified and instead of pre-defined and custom formats the last settings are always remembered and stored in registry.


Version 5.028

1. Modeler/Interpreter: Files are no longer opened for writing in exclusive mode. This sometimes conflicts with network shared drives and certain antivirus programs.
2. Modeler: Fixed a problem where it was not possible to enter "t" for table of coordinates or "a" for arc at the prompt line when adding a non-circular failure surface.
3. Compute: If the Janbu Corrected method was used in a probabilistic or sensitivity analysis, and another method other than Bishop or Janbu was also used, the program would mix up the statistical/sensitivity data.
4. Compute: Back analysis of steeply dipping surfaces in clay would result in wrong results for the active or passive load. This due to m_alpha checks not being properly applied. Fixed.
5. Compute: The elevation surface option with multiple slope limits did not work correctly for circular surfaces. Fixed.
6. Compute: Circular surfaces now check that there are enough slices to handle all soil material intersections with the surface. This will help you improve the accuracy for models with huge numbers of material boundaries.
7. Interpret: The picture format is now saved to the registry. As a result, when you start Interpret, the last setting of Picture Format is remembered.


Version 5.027

1. Modeler/Interpreter: Zoom To Extents now takes into account Line load, Distributed load and Infiltration arrows.
2. Modeler: Added warning when ratio of the model coordinates to the model dimensions is too large. Warning appears after adding an external boundary either manually or from a DXF.
3. Modeler: Added "Restore All Warning Messages" option to Preferences. This allows to restore warning messages previously hidden with "Don't show this message again" option.
4. Interpret/Compute: Discharge section on a boundary could cause a crash.
5. New Help system was added with new verification examples and manual.


Version 5.026

1. Modeler: A new option for the adding of a linearly varying head boundary condition in a groundwater analysis has been added.
2. Modeler: A new option for ungrouping support patterns has been added. This allows you to add a pattern then indiviually change a particular bolt in the pattern. Added menu option and right-click shortcut to ungroup Support Pattern into individual support items
3. Modeler: Bolts that are touching external with both ends could reverse their direction after adding a new anchor. Problem was fixed and bolts are now drawn with a faceplate on the first end.
4. Interpret: "Enlargement factor" option was missing from Image Export feature for charts
5. Modeler: Changed default color of mesh elements to light gray. The color can be changed in Display Options (and the setting is remembered).
6. New Help system was added with new verification examples and manual.


Version 5.025

1. Compute: Distributed loads located inside a material/slope (not on the slope surface) but outside a failure surface would be applied to the failure surface under certain circumstances. This is fixed.
2. Interpret: In the case of ponded water, the seismic load plot would incorrectly use the water weight. This is a graphing issue only, the compute engine correctly removes the weight of water from the seismic load calculation. The factor of safety results are not effected.
3. Interpret: In probabilistic mode when plotting histograms of data, and the secondary data was factor of safety<some number, invalid surfaces would be counted and displayed as failed surfaces on the plot. The numbers in the title of the plot would also be incorrect.
4. Interpret: Strength function markers and values are now displayed in front of the supplemental contours.
5. Interpret: In certain circumstances, the type of water surface assigned to a material would not be displayed incorrectly in the Infoviewer or data tips.
6. Interpreter: Fixed precision issue in tools file. The precision for location of tool objects was not adequate. This especially affects contour labels.
7. Interpret: Under certain circumstances, secondary contours of strength would sometimes come up blank. This is a graphing issue only and the factor of safety numbers are correct and use the correct strength.
8. Model: When adding a water table in statistics mode, the assign dialog would sometimes not appear.
9. Model/Interpret: Improved Toolbar code.
10. Model: Tab stops in the material and bolt property dialogs were improved. A small text truncation issue in the distributed load dialog was also fixed.


Version 5.024

1. Compute: Tension cracks under ponded water did not work correctly when the water depth in the tension crack was defined with any method other then the water table method. The hydro force in the tension crack now completely determines the force on the left/right side of the failure surface. The filled, filled to depth, filled below elevation, and percent filled now work correctly under ponded water. The depth of the tension crack now extends to the top of the ponded water.
2. Compute: The thrust line was not computed correctly for left to right surfaces with ponded water on the left or right side of the surface.


Version 5.023

1. Compute: Excess pore pressures were being generated in regions where the initial pore pressures were negative or zero. Now excess pore pressures are only generated in saturated (initial pore pressures > 0) regions. This only affects B-bar analyses (see the Groundwater tab in the Project Settings).


Version 5.022

1. New help system including new, improved, and updated tutorials. New startup dialog for people that are new to the program. New start menu.
2. Interpret: A new option called Show Coordinates has been added to the View menu. Coordinates of all the vertices can now be toggled on/off quickly using this option. A good option for quickly annotating your output with the vertex coordinates.
3. Model/Interpret: All the vertex coordinates are now automatically added to the InfoViewer. This is for people who have to supply coordinates in their technical reports. If you wish to turn them off, use the option in the Preferences dialog.
4. Compute: With the B-bar excess pore pressure option, the self-weight of a material can now generate its own excess pore pressure. This allows you to combine pore pressure due to a water table with pore pressure due to Ru effects.


Version 5.021

1. Model: Fixed a bug in the mesh generation for groundwater models. This bug was introduced in version 5.02 and would result in elements that incorrectly crossed boundaries.

Version 5.020

1. Groundwater Compute: Improved groundwater analysis algorithm for seepage faces.
2. Compute: Now checks for ponded water below the left or right surface intersection point. It then does not include the unit weight of this material in the calculation of the hydrostatic water load on the left or right side of the surface.
3. Model: Improved Seep/W file exporter. Better support for generating the model in Slide and exporting a file that runs in Seep/W.

Version 5.019

1. Groundwater Compute: The engine will check to see if there is flow into the model from the unknown boundary condition type. The unknown boundary condition will be converted to zero nodal flow for such cases.
2. Model: When groundwater finite-element modeling, deleting vertices could result in future incorrect discretization of boundaries when meshing and a resulting bad mesh.
3. Model: Improved Slope/W 4 and 5 file reader. Added support for GeoStudio 2004 files.

Version 5.018

1. Under very rare circumstances which almost always is associated with an optimized surface, the weight of a slice was inaccurately calculated.

Version 5.017

1. Now supports multiple HASPHL locks on the same USB hub.

Version 5.016

1. Modeler: In certain cases boundaries were not intersected properly and overlaps were not automatically fixed by Slide. This resulted in geometry error messages and sometimes prevented user from running Compute.
2. Modeler: "Automatically fix boundary overlaps" option in Preferences was removed. Material boundary overlaps are now always fixed.
3. Modeler: File Import for certain Slope/W files would abort with error "Could not read file". Fixed.
4. Modeler: Geometry would not import correctly for certain Slope/W files. Fixed. Overall improvement of Slope/W file reading.
5. Modeler: If you set the file to be probabilistic (or sensitivity), then defined a water table, the assign dialog to apply the water table to the materials is not shown. Fixed.
6. Modeler/Interpret: The three groundwater levels for sensitivity or proabability analyses were shown if you reverted back to deterministic mode. Fixed.
7. Modeler: The grid used for drawing is now saved to the registry so that when you restart the program, the grid settings you were using are restored. You can now restore the program default grid settings through a default button in the grid dialog.
8. Compute: Modified Chugh's method of grid interpolation could result in wrong extrapolated pore pressures. Fixed. Also improved the interpolation/extrapolation of coarse grids of sample points.
9. Modeler/Compute: Added the ability to use convex surfaces for optimization. See the optimization settings dialog.
10. Modeler/Compute: Added the ability to use the convex surface setting during optimization. See the optimization settings dialog.
11. Modeler/Compute: Added the ability to use the min depth and min elevation during optimization. See the optimization settings dialog.
12. Modeler: Improved DXF import of files with multiple overlaps of line segments..
13. Modeler/Compute: Added the ability to use the min depth and min elevation options for block searches.
14. Modeler/Interpret: Menu checkmarks would sometimes not be rendered correctly.
15. Interpret: Added the ability to plot more accurate and detailed pore water pressure and discrete strength function contours through the supplemental contours option. The old algorithm would sometimes produce coarse inacurate contours when a lot of sample points existed.

Version 5.015

1. New Hasp-HL hardlock support. Removed support for old beige hardlocks.

Version 5.014

1. "Copy (Slide Modeler Format)" in SlideInterpret, and "Edit->Paste from Interpret" in Slide now work for circular surfaces. Previously this functionality was only available for non-circular surfaces.
2. Interpret: If a circular surface was input, and then the surface type was set to non-circular, the circular surface could, sometimes, still be visible in the Interpreter. This is fixed.
3. Interpret: In rare instaces, optimized surfaces that hit the bottom boundary of the model would not load correctly into the Interpreter.
4. Compute: Optimization with an option of optimizing failure surfaces with a factor of safety under a certain value would sometimes not properly display the optimized surface in the Interpreter.
5. Modeler: In the Fredlund and Xing Hydraulic Parameters selection dialog, the units displayed were incorrect for the A and C parameters. The actual values were okay, it was just the text in the dialog that was wrong.

Version 5.013

1. The Barton-Bandis strength criterion has been updated to include the 70 degree maximum at low confining stresses (Barton and Choubey 1976). Phib has also been changed to Phir to better represent the current criterion. The help has been updated as well.
2. Compute: A problem with the optimization not including the distributed load in certain situations was fixed. In particular, if the load was on a vertical face.
3. Compute: In rare situations, Janbu corrected, coupled with a circular analysis, would yield a problematic file.
4. Interpret: Supplemental contours (Interpret->Data->Supplemental Contours->Setup) would not display "phi" contours properly for the first discrete strength function defined, if the function type was "drained" ("c" contours would be displayed instead of the "phi" contours). Only the supplemental contours for materials with a "discrete function" strength type were effected, the factor of safety calculations were not effected. Files do not need to be re-computed, only viewed again in the Interpreter.
5. Compute - There was a small improvement in an iteration component of the surface optimization algorithm. The final step of the optimization was improved, so that a better (i.e. lower FOS) surface will be picked. Typically this will only result in a change of factor of safety of less than 0.00001, but some (very sensitive) models may experience better results (change in FOS ~ 0.04). At all times, the results that were displayed were correct.

Version 5.012

1. Compute: Loads on vertical slope faces might not be applied correctly during optimization.
2. Compute: The interslice normal force associated with a vertical slope face with an applied load is now set correctly to the value of this load. This has no effect on the factor of safety results.
3. The point focus for a non-circular failure surface has been improved. You can now set it on the toe of a slope and have surfaces generated.

Version 5.011

1. Compute: Improved the iteration mechanism for deeply submerged slopes.
2. Interpret: Saving a tools file, while in the midst of adding the first drawing tool to a view, would create an invalid tools file (an error message would be display the next time the file was opened). This is fixed.
3. Support for new Educational system. Also update dll's to latest microsoft versions.

Version 5.010

1. B-bar method added for excess pore pressure modeling
2. Can now combine Ru with water surfaces
3. New material model that combines drained and undrained material parameters.
4. Interpret:The favourite text entry "Coordinates (3 decimal places)" did not display the y coordinate properly. This is fixed.
5. Model: A bug with importing water tables using DXF files was fixed. Also improved the documentation on the subject.
6. Air Entry value for unsaturated shear strength can now be defined.
7. Rapid drawdown analysis using the B-bar method.

Version 5.008

1. Compute: In certain cases, running batched computes of probabilistic files would not compute properly. This is fixed.
2. Compute: The batch folder-loading ( Alt-F ) in Slide Compute, will now write a batch file to test against the existing batch folder-loading (in order to identify "batch compute" vs. "multiple individual computes" bugs). In the Interpreter, type "comparefolders" on the command line, and pick the two folders to generate the report. The folder loader is now in the system menu as well.

Version 5.007

1. Interpret: "Multiple surfaces at this location" dialog is now shown much less frequently for "standard" data output files ". The Interpreter will automatically pick the appropriate surface, when possible.
2. Model: Previously, if the file extension had any capital letters,
the Interpret button would not be enabled. The Interpreter could still be started
and load the file, but the button in the modeler would not be enabled.
This is fixed.
3. Model/Interpret: Restricted users could not set the Page orientation in Page Setup dialog. Fixed.

Version 5.006

1. Model: Import of Slope/W files is much improved: i) Slide will now import files written by Slope/W version 5 (previously only version 4 files were imported). ii) Slide will now import Slope/W *.slz files, as well as the existing *.slp files. iii) The filter in the Open-file dialog was improved, to display all files that Slide can open (so "Files of type" doesn't have to be used). iv) The "material was renamed" warning that appeared if the lowest material was named "Bedrock" has been removed. v) Analysis Methods (eg. Bishop, Janbu, etc) are now imported. vi) Blocks are now imported, and converted to Slide's block search Point, Line or Window (as appropriate).
2. Model: When importing Slope/W files with a grid of total head as the pore-water pressure option, the last entry in the grid would be missed. This is fixed.
3. Model: The right-click menu for non-circular surfaces now has an option "Copy (list of coordinates)" When this option is selected, the list of vertices forming the slip surface is placed on the clipboard. This tabular list can then be pasted into Excel, or another program. This option is especially useful for comparing surfaces in different slope stability packages.
4. Model: "Show Coordinates" in the Slide Modeler, has been much improved. Once objects are picked for show coordinates, the coordinates are listed in the Infoviewer. The Infoviewer is formatted with tabs, so the list can be easily pasted into a spreadsheet. Decimal place formatting, and selecting of specific objects is controlled by the show coordinates dialog.
5. Model: Fixed check for overlapping segments that would sometimes erroneously report that boundary segments overlap for models where 2 vertices are located too close to each other.
6. Model: Improved speed of geometry check routines for models with very large number of materials.
7. Model: In DXF import, fixed a bug when polylines from layers other than the one specified could be imported. This could happen only if a single boundary was selected for import and the DXF file contained layer names not importable by Slide. This fix also improves the speed of import from such DXF files.
8. Model: Added option to ignore all errors when importing DXF file. If a warning dialog with an error pops up during DXF import, user can choose not to show any more warnings and continue importing file.
9. Model: Improved the DXF import.
10. Model: In very rare cases, when vertices on the exterior boundary are very close together (fraction of a millimetre), the program would create empty zones within the slope. These zones have a white color and could not be assigned material attributes.
11. Model: Added a note at the bottom of Water Pressure dialog: "NOTE: Pore pressure data can be contoured using Supplemental Contours option in Interpret"
12. Model: Fixed a problem where Slide could crash after deleting an external boundary.
13. Model: For boundary input using Coordinate Table, the requirement to input at least 3 points for External boundary and 2 points for material boundaries was removed.
14. Model:Fixed a bug in the security class for nodelocking of customers with a userid<100
15. Interpret:An uninitialized memory error was fixed.
16. Interpret: Part 2 of the verification manual was added to the help menu.

Version 5.005

1. For the Generalized Hoek-Brown failure criterion, GSI, mi, and D can now be defined as random variables in a probabilistic or sensitivity analysis. To do this, use the GSI calculator dialog in the material properties dialog and check the box stating that you want GSI, mi and D to be random instead of mb, s, and a.
2. Model / Interpret: Change: Metric units are now properly listed as "kN"
and "kPa" instead of "KN" and "KPa", in accordance with the official SI
standards.
3. Model: The coordinate table option in the right-click menu has been moved down the list. Often people would click this option when wanting to specify done.

Version 5.004

1. Compute: The Optimize Surfaces Settings dialog now offers an option "Snap Shallow Surfaces to Slope". The optimization occasionally formed surfaces that had unrealistically shallow sections, near the start or end of the surfaces. This option will remove these sections of the surface, resulting in a more realistic failure surface. The distance criteria used for the snapping is calculated automatically, or it can be specified in the dialog by checking the "Specify Distance" checkbox.
2. Groundwater Compute: Anosotropic permeabilites with an angle other than zero degrees did not work correctly.
3. Model: Added Seepage face option to the infiltration and nodal flow boundary condition for groundwater finite element analysis. This additional boundary condition will ensure that the total head at a node does not exceed the elevation head.
4. Model: Added coordinates table for boundary entry. While adding a
boundary user can bring up a table to easily enter all the coordinates of
the boundary. Coordinates can be typed in manually, pasted from a
spreadsheet program or imported from a file.
5. Model/Interpret: Added/Fixed printer setup option. A Printer Setup
button was added to Page Setup dialog. It gives a user the ability to select
a different printer, paper size and other printing options. The printer
settings are remembered until user quits the program.
6. Model: Fixed zoom on right click. Sometimes after panning, a right
mouse click would do zoom in on window.
7. Compute: Added tensile strength to the power curve strength model.
8. Model/Interpret: Updated the Help files.
9. Interpret: De-selecting groundwater mode, when there are no slope stability results available caused problems.
10. Model: Statistical properties for materials and anchors were not imported (using File->Import->Properties, or using the default properties file) along with the standard set of properties for each material or anchor. The problem is now fixed.
11. Model: Bug fix where correctly entered material or tension crack boundaries could be rejected by the modeler with the error message "Material and tension
crack boundaries must lie within the external boundary".
12. Model: Improved DXF import and Export.
13. Model: Pore water pressure grids (PWP files) now allow the import of DXF files containing lines and polylines. The line/polyline vertices are entered as points in the grid.
14. Model: Fixed a bug where Infiltration of 0 was not saved to the file.
15. Model/Interpret: Fixed a bug where a dialog window could suddenly crash.
16. Interpret: Five new data types for Finite Element Analysis groundwater models: Horizontal, vertical and total hydraulic gradients; horizontal and vertical permeabilities. User data variables corresponding to these data types (ix,iy,it,permx,permy) were also added. Existing Slide files must be re-computed (with Slide Compute 5.004 or later) to view any of these data types.
17. Interpret: The Infoviewer did not list groundwater material properties, when the slope stability results were being viewed. This is fixed.
18. Groundwater Compute: Saved files with a single or double quote in the title would not run correctly. The modeler now strips the quotes from the job title.
19. Interpret: When closing multiple files with added tools, the program would only ask to save the tools for the first file.
20. Interpret:There is now an option (Groundwater->Export->Allow Suction Pressures) to control suction pressures during the export of Phase2 pwp files. If this option is checked, the values are written to the file without modification. If this option is unchecked, all negative values are set to zero.
21. Interpret: Drawing in the Interpreter could be very slow if a model had many (1000+) surfaces, all with identical locations and identical factors of safety (eg. a model that had a 5000 surface block search, with two block-search points).
22. Model/Interpret: :When using FEA as the groundwater model, the datatips (the yellow text, that appears as you hover the mouse over a material) would list "Ky/Kx Ratio". The text should have been "K2/K1 Ratio", as is entered in the dialog. Only the datatip display was incorrect; the computation and results were not effected.

Version 5.003

1. Model/Interpret: Better handling of large coordinates in models.
2. Model: Two discrete functions could be defined with the same name leading to unpredictable results.
3. Compute: Tangent line now works for slope search.
4. Compute/Interpret: Overall slope reliability when the minimum surface is the same and goes through a material with non-random strength properties would sometimes yield an unreadable data file.
5. Compute/Interpret: Error codes -119 (non-circular surface above tension crack zone), and -120 (tension on the base) were added.
6. Compute: Fixed a bug which would crash the program if the sensitivity of certain bolt parameters was attempted.
7. Compute: Effective tensile stresses on the base of a slice that exceeded the tensile strength for non-linear failure models (Hoek-Brown, Power Curve, Barton-Bandis, Hyperbolic, Shear-Normal Functions) were not being handled correctly. This resulted in data files that could not be read by the Interpreter.
8. Compute: For non-linear failure envelopes (Hoek-Brown, Power Curve, Barton-Bandis, Hyperbolic, Shear-Normal Functions), improved the iteration and convergence checks.
9. Modeler/Compute: Added the ability for users to define an advanced error check to look for effective tensile stresses on the base of slices and throw away surfaces that have these tensile stresses. This check is not on by default but can be turned on in the Methods…Advanced dialog in the Project Settings.
10. Interpret: If two discrete functions were in the data file but the first one wasn’t used for a material, the Interpreter would not contour the functions correctly.
11. Interpret: Composite surfaces were sometimes not drawn correctly.
12. Interpret: Right-clicking on a single surface would not give the option to plot the data associated with the surface.
13. Interpret: Plus sign added to the final contour interval for safety factor contours. This is to make sure customers understand that the last interval includes all safety factor data to infinity.
14. Model/Interpret: Updated the Help system.

Version 5.002

1. Model: When adding a valid Maximum water table, the program would incorrectly give error message that the boundary must be above.
2. Model: When switching to Groundwater mode, statistical Min, Max, and Mean water table boundaries were not deleted.
3. Model: If the user changes number of elements in Mesh Setup dialog and then clicks on Mesh button in the dialog, the model is not rediscretized before meshing.
4. Model: In Demo version, it is probably confusing to the user why Undo/Redo is disabled after they perform any action. Added "(Disabled in Demo)" text to all disabled menu items in the Demo version.
5. "Don't show me this" flag for Demo Startup dialog was saved to a file in the application folder. Now saved to the registry.
6. Compute: On very rare occasions Compute engine might crash at the very end of computation.
7. Fixed problem with commercial network nodelock.


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