GeoStudio 2012, March 2012 Release

version 8.0.1.5608

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Below are the changes made to GeoStudio since the previous release.

All Products

• Find out What's New in GeoStudio 2012!

GeoStudio 2012, March 2012 Release

version 8.0.2.5675

Download the latest release.

Below are the changes made to GeoStudio since the previous release.

Finite Element Products

• Bug fix: A floating line or circular region that intersected a background region did not always properly generate a finite element node at the intersection point.
• Bug fix: In rare cases, region lines could have overlapping finite element edges, which meant the solver could not compute results.

All Products

• Change: The File Toolbar was hidden by default, and had to be made visible using the View Toolbars command. It is now visible by default.
• Change: The default toolbar position has been changed so that all toolbars fit within 2 rows in the GeoStudio window, rather than being stacked on top of each other. This provides more space for the Define and Results views.
• Bug fix: While solving an analysis, if you switched into the Define view, the view would constantly update.
• Bug fix: When moving objects in Modify Objects and then selecting Undo, the selection rectangle would not update properly.
• Bug fix: Draw Regions - when drawing a new region, clicking on an existing region edge, and then clicking on another existing region edge, the intermediate points were not being added to the new region.
• Bug fix: Selecting a Contour of "(none)" in the Define view Analysis toolbar did not work. You had to use the Draw Contours command instead.
• Bug fix: The Grid increment up/down arrow buttons used an integer increment, rather than the proper Grid spacing increments used in GeoStudio 2007.

SLOPE/W

• Change: When you select a new Time Step or Sensitivity Run number in Results view, the minimum slip surface is now selected automatically. This means that your current slip surface number may change, but it will be the slip surface with the lowest factor of safety.
• Change: Right-clicking in the Slip Surfaces window in Results view will now display a context menu with a "Select Critical Slip" command.
• Bug fix: Cohesion and Phi material property values were not read in from GeoStudio 2007 files in a case where you had first chosen a Spatial Mohr Coulomb or Function model for Cohesion or Phi, then changed your material model to Mohr Coulomb and typed in constant values.
• Bug fix: In a Sensitivity analysis, there would sometimes be no slip surfaces shown when initially viewing the results.
• Bug fix: "Minimum Factor of Safety vs. Time" plot in Results view was plotting the factor of safety for the current slip surface, rather than the minimum factor of safety at each time step.
• Bug fix: Selecting a new time step did not update the factor of safety in the Results view if the selected analysis was a Sensitivity analysis.
• Bug fix: The View Sliding Mass information did not show correct values for a Janbu or Bishop analysis.
• Bug fix: Opening a GeoStudio 2007 file with invalid entry/exit slip surface points would sometimes cause GeoStudio 2012 to crash.
• Change: When selecting a Slip surface in Results view, a message is now displayed if the slip surface slice information does not match the stored slip surface factor of safety. This can happen when opening a GeoStudio 2007 file and viewing various slip surfaces in GeoStudio 2012. Re-solve the analysis to ensure that the displayed slice information matches the slip surface factor of safety.

GeoStudio 2012, May 2012 Release

version 8.0.3.5825

Download the latest release.

Below are the changes made to GeoStudio since the previous release.

All Products

• Feature: GeoStudio now supports files larger than 2GB.
• Feature: Sketch Text can now be colored just like other Sketch objects.
• Feature: Right-click in Windows Explorer and choose "New - GeoStudio Document" to create a new (empty) .gsz file using your default template.
• Feature: If GeoStudio 2007 and GeoStudio 2012 are both installed, right-click on a .gsz file and choose "Open with", and you will have the option to open with either GeoStudio version.
• Feature: In KeyIn Analyses when the root item is selected, you can now see who last saved the file, the revision number, the file version, and the version of GeoStudio that was used to save the file. These properties are also included in reports generated using View Report. The "Last Modified By" property is also displayed on the Start Page when a file is open.
• Feature: Added online help (F1) to the License Manager.
• Change: GeoStudio now uses port 80 for license activation rather than port 8888, to make activation easier for companies that block port 8888.
• Bug fix: Several bugs were fixed which could cause GeoStudio to crash under various scenarios.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash on Windows XP when switching to Results View.
• Bug fix: At very small zoom factors some labels would appear extra large.
• Bug fix: The mouse scroll wheel would not work if GeoStudio was open in a secondary monitor to the left of the primary monitor.
• Bug fix: Region labels were covered by any other shaded area, such as contours, liquefaction zones, etc.
• Bug fix: In a particular Draw mode (e.g., Draw Initial Water Table), the view preference for the object being drawn is now disabled.
• Bug fix: Some controls (such as the "Time" list for initial conditions on the Settings tab of KeyIn Analyses) would not be displayed after switching tabs.
• Bug fix: When upgrading an older file, sketch text that uses the REPORT function (such as displaying a list of materials) would not upgrade properly.
• Bug fix: It was not possible to open a file created with version 5 or earlier.
• Bug fix: On computers where the locale settings were configured such that the decimal character was something other than a period, some controls would not allow any numbers to be entered other than whole integers. This bug affected KeyIn Points in all products, as well as a number of dialogs in SLOPE/W.
• Bug fix: When creating a new file from a template, GeoStudio would actually open and edit the template itself rather than just using it as the base for a new file.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio setup now enforces XP SP3 as the minimum operating system.
• Bug fix: The Set Page and Set Units and Scale dialog boxes would not update when changing to Imperial Units.
• Bug fix: The Analysis Explorer window now supports changing analyses using the arrow keys, without losing focus.
• Bug fix: The Start Page would not refresh when project properties were changed using KeyIn Analyses, such as changing the Title, Author or Comments.

SLOPE/W

• Feature: The Slip Surface docking window now has a context menu with an option to "Select Critical Slip Surface".
• Change: Previously results for non-critical slip surfaces would not be available if the file was opened in a version of GeoStudio other than the one that originally solved the analysis. Now results will be shown, and the Solve Manager window will indicate if they may be out of date because of differences between versions or because of changes in a parent analysis.
• Bug fix: When a Shear Normal strength function is used, a resulting negative cohesion could cause the solver to stop.
• Bug fix: In geometry with a vertical wall or with a tension crack, slip surfaces and safety maps may not display properly.
• Bug fix: Add-Ins can now use GetParam to retrieve a material's Unit Weight.
• Bug fix: Computed reinforcement values were incorrect when the "F of S Dependent" option was set to Yes for a Reinforcement Load.
• Bug fix: The solver would crash if an analysis was selected that does both slip surface optimization and probabilistic.
• Bug fix: The solver was throwing out some valid slip surface results.
• Bug fix: The solver will now compute a factor of safety even with only one slice.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash in Result View when the Safety Factor is 0 for some slices in a Finite Element stability analysis.
• Bug fix: When cloning a SLOPE/W analysis, the slip surface data was not being copied over to the new analysis.

SEEP/W

• Bug fix: For boundary conditions using a Total Head vs Volume boundary function—which always have the "Potential Seepage Face Review" option selected—the solver will now only perform a review when y < elevation. This restores the behavior used in GeoStudio 2007.

SIGMA/W

• Bug fix: Under certain conditions, no liquefaction shading would be displayed even when there were liquefaction zones.

GeoStudio 2012, May 2012 Release

version 8.0.4.5848

Download the latest release.

Below are the changes made to GeoStudio since the previous release.

SLOPE/W

• Bug fix: A bug was introduced in version 8.0.3 in Draw Graph which caused a slice's base angle to be displayed incorrectly for right-to-left slopes.
• Bug fix: In an add-in, the base angle for a slice was being reported incorrectly for right-to-left slopes.

VADOSE/W

• Bug fix: VADOSE/W did not compute vapor flow correctly when using imperial units. Unit inconsistencies in the formulation could cause the solver to stop, or the results could be in error if the analysis completed.

GeoStudio 2012, July 2012 Release

version 8.0.5.6073

Download the latest release.

Below are the changes made to GeoStudio since the previous release.

All Products

• Feature: GeoStudio 2012 is now available in Simplified Chinese (PRC). By default, GeoStudio will automatically use the Chinese language when run on a computer whose language is set to Simplified Chinese (PRC), and will run in English in all other cases. To change the language, choose Edit - Options from the GeoStudio menu, then pick the desired language from the list. Our thanks to CnTech Co., Ltd. for their invaluable help with the translation.
• Feature: An improved installer and new tools are available for setting up a network license server. Further instructions are available online in a PDF file titled "Setting Up an Lmadmin License Server" at http://www.geo-slope.com/downloads/utilities.aspx.
• Feature: Speed improvements have been made while saving changes to disk, resulting in improved solve times and file save times, especially for larger projects.
• Feature: Wherever lists are displayed (such as the Slip Surface window), columns can be rearranged by dragging them, sorted by clicking on a column header, or hidden by right-clicking on a column header.
• Change: A number of changes were made to better support localization when displaying or entering values, such as using the correct decimal character, thousands separator, and list separator.
• Bug fix: Under certain conditions, GeoStudio was unable to solve some analyses, displaying an error about failing to open the file.
• Bug fix: Inserting a picture with Sketch Pictures caused GeoStudio to lose its geometry if there was a missing picture already in the list.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio now allows viewing results for an analysis whose parent analysis is not solved, as long as it does not depend on results from the parent.
• Bug fix: When starting GeoStudio, GeoLicense would sometimes crash while checking for updated licenses.
• Bug fix: The finite element solvers would crash if an analysis used more than 255 materials.
• Bug fix: Files with Chinese names could not be opened from the Start Page. This issue likely affected other languages as well.
• Bug fix: DXF files generated while in Results View could be corrupted and impossible to open in AutoCAD.
• Bug fix: Boundary conditions could not be changed after cloning an analysis.
• Bug fix: When installed for the first time on a computer, GeoStudio would not display the File toolbar.
• Bug fix: When a file's time units are set to "Unspecified" (in Set Units and Scale), Draw Graph would not show any graphs that included a time dimension.
• Bug fix: Opening a GeoStudio 2007 file in GeoStudio 2012 would sometimes display upgrade warning messages that did not apply.
• Bug fix: Removing the grid values in the Set Grid Spacing command could cause GeoStudio to crash.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash when navigating the menu using the keyboard.
• Bug fix: In Draw Isolines, a selection of "All" or "Last" time steps would not be remembered when switching between analyses.
• Bug fix: In Draw Graph, select "All" time steps, change analyses, and the "All" would change to "Custom" and the graph would not display until time steps were re-selected.
• Bug fix: In Draw Graph, if "Custom Locations" were chosen while solving, they would not be saved.
• Bug fix: When restoring the GeoStudio window on a monitor to the left of the primary monitor, the leftmost column in lists would be too narrow.
• Bug fix: In certain graphs (including Slip Surface graphs), and when the axis range was negative, GeoStudio could crash when setting the option to view the graph in log format.

SLOPE/W

• Feature: SLOPE/W can now handle any arbitrary shape of the Shear-Normal strength function. The restriction of a function with positive slope is no longer required. Equivalent C and Phi values are computed to represent the specific strength at any effective normal stress at the base of a slice.
• Change: Slices with positive pore water pressure will be reported as having a pore air pressure of zero, because in such cases the pore air pressure is not used.
• Bug fix: When using an external file for PWP or Stress conditions in a SLOPE/W analysis, we may get incorrect values or crash during Solve or when switching into Results view and viewing a different slip surface.
• Bug fix: The solver would crash when encountering a slip surface with invalid material properties such as a negative unit weight, negative cohesion, or negative frictional angle. This may happen in probabilistic analyses when the distribution of the material parameters are not restricted (or capped) to be in the positive range. Now the slip surface will be given a 988 error code instead.
• Bug fix: SLOPE/W now better supports special cases in reinforcement, such as when the reinforcement starting point is defined inside the sliding mass, or when a reinforcement intersects the slip surface in multiple locations.
• Bug fix: When computing the geosynthetic bond strength at the base of a slice, the overburden stress was not being included in the surcharge load.
• Bug fix: The solver would crash when encountering an air gap with a zero volume. This condition can be caused by regions that are drawn next to each other but without sharing a line or point. Now such a condition will generate an error instead of crashing.
• Bug fix: Occasionally, the Draw Safety Map button in the toolbar would be unresponsive.
• Bug fix: The solver reports a 998 error under certain conditions, such as slip surfaces that intersect the bottom of the section because the ground surface line is not long enough.
• Bug fix: The solver could crash when a circular floating region shared a point with a background region.
• Bug fix: The solver was unable to find the intersecting point of a reinforcement load under certain conditions.
• Bug fix: When working in Results View with an analysis solved by an older version (e.g., GeoStudio 2007) using Grid and Radius, factor of safety contours may not be displayed, and it may not be possible to select slip surfaces graphically.
• Bug fix: After saving a GeoStudio 2012 file in GeoStudio 2007 format, if the file contained contours in a SLOPE/W analysis, GeoStudio 2007 would crash when trying to open the file.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio would crash when working with a file created in GeoStudio 2007 containing a GLE analysis with an optimized slip surface.
• Bug fix: The factor of safety displayed in the toolbar may not update when changing analyses.
• Bug fix: It was not possible to abort solving a probabilistic analysis, nor during the slip surface optimization sequence.
• Bug fix: For staged rapid drawdown analyses, a Total Phi of zero is now allowed.
• Bug fix: It was not possible to use arrow keys to navigate through the list of slip surfaces in the Slip Surfaces docking window when the Slice Information dialog was also displayed, because focus would go to the Slice Information window every time a new slip surface was selected.

SIGMA/W

• Change: Interface elements may now be given secondary nodes on any element edge. Previously the short edges were not allowed to have secondary nodes.
• Bug fix: Stress boundary conditions applied to the short edge of an interface element were not being distributed to the nodes.
• Bug fix: KeyIn Materials would not allow entering a unit weight of zero.

QUAKE/W

• Bug fix: KeyIn Materials would not allow entering a unit weight of zero.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio would occasionally crash under Windows XP when viewing a QUAKE/W analysis and switching into Results View

TEMP/W

• Bug fix: The adaptive time stepping algorithm could use the wrong climate data sets when calculating the time of salient events (e.g., sunrise, sunset, and rainfall onset and end).

VADOSE/W

• Bug fix: The adaptive time stepping algorithm could use the wrong climate data sets when calculating the time of salient events (e.g., sunrise, sunset, and rainfall onset and end).

GeoStudio 2012, July 2012 Release

version 8.0.6.6095

Download the latest release.

Below are the changes made to GeoStudio since the previous release.

All Products

• Change: In KeyIn Analyses, the list of custom elapsed times must now be separated by semicolons rather than commas, to avoid confusion in locales where commas are used as decimal characters or thousands separators.
• Change: Localization improvements were made in KeyIn Analyses, Draw Mesh Properties, KeyIn Regions, and elsewhere.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash when hovering the mouse over a graph window.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash in the Draw Initial Water Table and KeyIn Initial Water Table commands.
• Bug fix: Switching between analyses after solving sometimes caused GeoStudio to crash.

SLOPE/W

• Bug fix: In a probabilistic analysis, removing a defined correlation coefficient could cause the solver to crash.

GeoStudio 2012, July 2012 Release

version 8.0.7.6129

Download the latest release.

Below are the changes made to GeoStudio since the previous release.

All Products

• Bug fix: KeyIn Regions displays this error when typing in a list of points: "Point 0 does not exist."
• Bug fix: The Result Times window in Results view would not always show time steps from all previous analyses in a chain.

SLOPE/W

• Bug fix: In KeyIn Slip Surface Entry and Exit, and in KeyIn Slip Surface Grid and Radius, values entered in the 'x' and 'y' controls may be changed unexpectedly and/or may generate unnecessary error messages.
• Bug fix: In KeyIn Slip Surface Entry and Exit, the entry and exit ranges would not snap to the ground surface line as they should, resulting in invalid ranges.
• Bug fix: In KeyIn Slip Surface Limits, the coordinate edit boxes would be disabled until "Specified Points" was cleared and re-checked.
• Bug fix: The Draw Factor of Safety Contours command was not computing the factor of safety properly at each grid point, resulting in invalid contours.
• Bug fix: Factor of safety contours would not display when the contour range was very large.
• Bug fix: In Results view, the Draw Contours command did not display any contours.
• Bug fix: Draw Probability did not display the P (Failure) plots for probabilistic analyses with multiple time steps.
• Bug fix: When opening a file created by earlier versions, probabilistic and sensitivity data would be lost.
• Bug fix: When opening a file created by earlier versions, Phi, Cohesion and Unit Weight would not be imported.

SEEP/W

• Bug fix: If an initial water table ended with a vertical line segment, the water table elevation to the right of the last segment was incorrect.

SIGMA/W

• Bug fix: When opening a file created by earlier versions, Unit Weight would not be imported.
• Bug fix: If an initial water table ended with a vertical line segment, the water table elevation to the right of the last segment was incorrect.

QUAKE/W

• Bug fix: When opening a file created by earlier versions, Unit Weight would not be imported.

CTRAN/W

• Change: Localization improvements were made in View Particle Tracking and View Particle Mass.

GeoStudio 2012, October 2012 Release

version 8.0.8.6368

Download the latest release.

Below are the changes made to GeoStudio since the previous release.

All Products

• Feature: A couple of changes have been made to lists (such as in the Solve Manager, KeyIn Materials, etc.): they will now remember any changes you make to their column widths, so that next time you display the list it looks the same as the previous time; Home, End, PgUp and PgDown keys now work as expected; double-clicking a column separator will adjust the column's width to include all its data; Ctrl-+ will adjust all column widths to include all data; columns line up better when printing; and column headers no longer allow clicking unless the list can be sorted (the only list that can be sorted at this point is the Slip Surfaces list).
• Bug fix: GeoStudio was unable to open a gsz archive containing more than 65,535 files (such as for analyses with a large number of time steps).
• Bug fix: Solving an analysis from a previous time step (after having stopped a solve in progress) may not produce the correct results.
• Bug fix: The Status column in the Solve Manager window was indicating the wrong date.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could be slow to start up and/or slow to start solving when configured to use network licensing with a license server that was not available.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash under certain conditions when clicking a checkbox in the Solve Manager window while in Results view.
• Bug fix: Draw Graph could occasionally appear to hang when graphing data across many time steps or in particularly large files.
• Bug fix: Draw Graph could crash under certain conditions.
• Bug fix: Moving a region's point on top of another one removed both points from the region.
• Bug fix: The Clone command has been removed from KeyIn Regions, Lines and Points, since it is not valid for those objects.
• Bug fix: When using multiple monitors, GeoStudio will no longer appear on a monitor that no longer exists.
• Bug fix: Opening a v7 Basic file may generate an error about exceeding the maximum number of elements.
• Bug fix: In Help - License Management - Available Licenses, the "Usage" button was disabled when a network activation license was selected.
• Change: Additional information about common license lifecycle tasks was added to the online help.

SLOPE/W

• Feature: Probabilistic and sensitivity analysis can now be performed on most material models and pore-water pressure parameters, including B-bar and Ru.
• Feature: The Slip Surfaces window has been improved: a Select Critical button to quickly jump to the critical slip surface; additional columns showing more information about slip surfaces; the ability to hide unwanted columns; export, copy and print; and icons indicating which column is being used for sorting.
• Feature: The Hoek-Brown shear strength function estimation algorithm was improved to produce a better splined fit through the data points at low confining stresses. The algorithm now varies non-linearly the confining stresses used to generate the splined function. The improvement may result in differences in the critical slip surface for shallower slip surfaces.
• Bug fix: Slide mass fields were missing from Sketch Text - Insert Field - Advanced.
• Bug fix: Liquefaction zones were not being displayed when using results from QUAKE/W or SIGMA/W.
• Bug fix: In View Slice Information, the data would not print correctly or copy to the clipboard.
• Bug fix: Slip surfaces were not being generated correctly along bedrock if the bedrock outcropped (intersected) the ground surface.
• Bug fix: View Slice Information displayed Slide Mass information instead, when viewing FE stress analysis results and clicking on a slice.
• Bug fix: Slip surface limits were being displayed even when they were invalid, and were not updating when the geometry changed.
• Bug fix: The total normal stresses were not always listed correctly in View Slice Information.
• Bug fix: Overburden stresses were not being computed correctly in the Strength=f(Overburden) soil model when using stresses from QUAKE/W or SIGMA/W.
• Bug fix: Viewing slice information for non-critical slip surfaces in a Newmark analysis may not display all slice forces, and may cause an error message to be displayed.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio may stop responding or become very slow when viewing body loads, especially with a large number of regions.
• Bug fix: Factor of Safety contours were not upgrading properly when opening a file created by an earlier version.
• Bug fix: When opening a file created by earlier versions, probabilistic and sensitivity material names and modifiers were not associated with the range function. In addition, multiple entries of the Base Case were shown in the Sensitivity Runs docking window.
• Bug fix: When surcharge loads were applied to the left and right sides of a vertical slope, the normal surcharge force could be computed incorrectly.
• Bug fix: The solver could crash when solving a block slip surface with vertical projection angles.
• Bug fix: Shear force direction was incorrect when applied perpendicular to the reinforcement if the direction of movement was right-to-left.
• Bug fix: Objects created entirely in a KeyIn dialog, such as KeyIn Point Loads, KeyIn Piezometric Lines, and KeyIn Reinforcements) could not be selected using Modify Objects.
• Bug fix: Some KeyIn dialogs with 'x' and 'y' edit boxes were not saving the 'x' value, requiring it to be re-typed.

SEEP/W

• Bug fix: Primary value boundary conditions were sometimes not being interpolated to the Gauss points for the purpose of material property calculations. Instead, the conditions at the end of the last step were being used. The resulting discrepancy in the material properties produced a slight error in the results. The error was only noticeable if the problem contained elements associated with primary value boundary conditions and material models that were non-linearly a function of the solution (e.g. saturated/unsaturated).

SIGMA/W

• Bug fix: Normal/Tangential Stress boundary condition arrows were not displayed correctly.
• Bug fix: The SIGMA/W solver could crash when a Cam Clay material has a kappa value greater than or equal to the lambda value.
• Bug fix: Primary value boundary conditions were sometimes not being interpolated to the Gauss points for the purpose of material property calculations. Instead, the conditions at the end of the last step were being used. The resulting discrepancy in the material properties produced a slight error in the results. The error was only noticeable if the problem contained elements associated with primary value boundary conditions and material models that were non-linearly a function of the solution (e.g. saturated/unsaturated).

TEMP/W

• Bug fix: Primary value boundary conditions were sometimes not being interpolated to the Gauss points for the purpose of material property calculations. Instead, the conditions at the end of the last step were being used. The resulting discrepancy in the material properties produced a slight error in the results. The error was only noticeable if the problem contained elements associated with primary value boundary conditions and material models that were non-linearly a function of the solution (e.g. saturated/unsaturated).

AIR/W

• Bug fix: Primary value boundary conditions were sometimes not being interpolated to the Gauss points for the purpose of material property calculations. Instead, the conditions at the end of the last step were being used. The resulting discrepancy in the material properties produced a slight error in the results. The error was only noticeable if the problem contained elements associated with primary value boundary conditions and material models that were non-linearly a function of the solution (e.g. saturated/unsaturated).

VADOSE/W

• Bug fix: Primary value boundary conditions were sometimes not being interpolated to the Gauss points for the purpose of material property calculations. Instead, the conditions at the end of the last step were being used. The resulting discrepancy in the material properties produced a slight error in the results. The error was only noticeable if the problem contained elements associated with primary value boundary conditions and material models that were non-linearly a function of the solution (e.g. saturated/unsaturated).

GeoStudio 2012, November 2012 Release

version 8.0.9.6484

Download the latest release.

Below are the changes made to GeoStudio since the previous release.

All Products

• Feature: GeoStudio is now Windows 8 Compatible.
• Feature: Prepared GeoStudio to open files created by version 8.1 (not yet released).
• Feature: A 'Test' button in the License Manager now checks for the availability of a network license server.
• Change: When exporting data to CSV, we now use the user's locale settings to choose the delimiter, to better support locale-specific formatting.
• Bug fix: Under certain conditions, the Solve Manager may indicate an analysis is being solved when in fact it was canceled due to Verify errors.
• Bug fix: Under certain conditions, switching between different analyses in Results view may cause GeoStudio to stop responding.
• Bug fix: When starting to solve an analysis, GeoStudio would switch to Results view, but would show the old results for a short time (until this particular analysis started solving).
• Bug fix: Grid spacing could not be changed in Results view.
• Bug fix: Modify Objects would select a background picture rather than the region or line placed in front of it.
• Bug fix: Undo/Redo in Sketch Pictures did not work correctly when scaling an image.
• Bug fix: Changes made in Sketch Pictures did not mark the file as needing to be saved.
• Bug fix: In some cases the License Manager would display duplicate licenses in the list.
• Bug fix: When importing a DXF file as an image, the text imported from DXF would appear truncated and with gaps between the characters.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio crashes when displaying dynamic Sketch Text in Define view that references fields under the ResultSet object
• Bug fix: Setup would fail on some systems with an error about a network location being unavailable.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio would crash on Windows 8 when choosing File - Print.
• Bug fix: Buttons and links on the Start Page were unresponsive on Windows 8.
• Bug fix: The start page shows a red 'x' instead of each icon on older XP computers with IE6 installed.

SLOPE/W

• Change: A small change was made in the computation of the effective base normal stress for the Ordinary Method, for consistency with the equation presented by Duncan and Wright.
• Bug fix: For an analysis using PWP Conditions from 'Piezometric Line with Ru,' the solver was always using the Ru value, even for materials where 'Include Ru in PWP' was set to 'No.'
• Bug fix: Results view may take a long time to display when viewing multiple slip surfaces.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio may crash when viewing multiple slip surfaces from a GeoStudio 2007 file that used Auto Locate.

SIGMA/W

• Feature: The hyperbolic model described by Duncan et al. (1980) has been added to SIGMA/W. The model is sometimes referred to as the hyperbolic E-B constitutive model because the bulk modulus (B) is considered to be constant while the elastic modulus (E) varies according to a hyperbolic relationship, resulting in non-linearity in both the volume and stress responses. The volumetric strain increment tends towards zero at failure as a result of this assumption, which is in keeping with the idea of a critical state. The new hyperbolic constitutive model also allows for specification of a ratio of unload-reload modulus number relative to the modulus number. The stress-strain response during unloading-reloading can therefore demonstrate a stiffer response as compared to the initial loading response, which is controlled by the user specified initial elastic modulus and Poisson's ratio.
• Bug fix: Fixed an occasional crash while solving.

QUAKE/W

• Bug fix: In KeyIn Earthquake Records, selecting all records and clicking Delete would not remove the records from the list.

GeoStudio 2012, November 2012 Release

version 8.0.10.6504

Download the latest release.

Below are the changes made to GeoStudio since the previous release.

All Products

• Bug fix: A bug was introduced in the previous release which prevented graphing some parameters.

GeoStudio 2012, June 2013 Release

version 8.11.1.7283

Download the latest release.

Below are the changes made to GeoStudio since the previous release.

GeoStudio 2014 Preview

A preview of GeoStudio 2014 is now available! This preview offers significant improvements to TEMP/W, including a new Land-Climate Interaction boundary condition, improved thermosyphon and convective surface boundary conditions, and support for 1D analyses.

The GeoStudio 2014 Preview is included when you install the GeoStudio 2012 June 2013 Release. Read more about the GeoStudio 2014 Preview.

All Products - New Features

The biggest changes introduced in this release that affect all GeoStudio products include faster solve times, a richer experience with .gsz files in the Windows shell, a smoother installation experience, and a Spanish language option. The full list of changes includes:

• Feature: Solve times have been improved in all products, especially on computers with multiple cores.
• Feature: Solve time has been improved when using the finite element Parallel Direct Equation Solver.
• Feature: When opening a file created with an older version of GeoStudio (such as GeoStudio 2007) and then saving it, GeoStudio no longer strips out the old results.
• Feature: Solve times have been improved when solving files with many analyses.
• Feature: GeoStudio's installer has been improved, giving more help around licensing during upgrades and uninstalls.
• Feature: GeoStudio files (.gsz) are now more integrated with Windows Explorer, allowing you to search for words in the file, view thumbnails and previews, and get detailed information about file properties.
• Feature: GeoStudio 2012 now supports the Spanish language. Use the Edit Options command to change your language settings.
• Feature: The Draw Axes command has been removed, and the Sketch Axes command improved. It now includes support for top and right axis labels, and for text in any script.
• Feature: The list of graphs in Draw Graph now shows the x and y parameters.
• Feature: GeoStudio licenses can be activated even if no Internet connection is available.

SLOPE/W - New Features

• Feature: Reinforcement loads can be modeled with or without reinforcement anchorage.
• Feature: An algorithm was developed in the GLE solution scheme to filter out some converged but physically invalid slip surfaces.
• Feature: Improved the speed of solving a stability analysis using a piezometric line.
• Feature: The Draw Contours command is now available in Results view, allowing you to contour PWP and material properties.
• Feature: In Draw Graph, graphs can now be generated over multiple time steps, to see how data changes over time.

All Products - Additional Changes

These additional changes and bug fixes are also included:

• Change: GeoStudio no longer allows you to Save As or Close a file while it is being solved.
• Bug fix: Finite Element analyses of different types were not being solved in parallel.
• Bug fix: In the Solve Manager docking window, checking or unchecking many analyses at once could make GeoStudio slow to respond.
• Bug fix: The grid spacing controls in the status bar would not work for locales where the decimal character was anything other than ".".
• Bug fix: Results view may not update automatically when new results are available.
• Bug fix: In KeyIn Analyses, attempting to delete an analysis from a read-only file would fail but would not display an error message.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash after changing an analysis name, switching to a different analysis, then hitting Undo.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio may crash when saving a file while in Define if the file contains sketch text that references fields from the Results view.
• Bug fix: Several crashes and hangs in various scenarios have been fixed.
• Bug fix: In View Result Information, selected nodes were not highlighted in the drawing.
• Bug fix: Hitting Ctrl-Z in some dialog boxes would not appear to undo the last change.
• Bug fix: Some sketch objects did not undo or redo properly.
• Bug fix: In Draw Graph, some parameters could not be graphed if time step 0 was selected.
• Bug fix: In Draw Mesh Properties, if invalid data is entered and an error message is displayed, the data now reverts back to the last valid value.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio was unable to import DXF files from some sources.
• Bug fix: In KeyIn Functions and Draw Graph, the axis labels could in some cases be displayed on the wrong tick marks.
• Bug fix: In KeyIn Functions, the Add Points and Move Points buttons may be disabled until you click on View Function and then back to Edit Data Points.
• Bug fix: Images (added through Sketch Pictures) would disappear after hitting Undo multiple times.
• Bug fix: Opening some version 5 files could cause GeoStudio to crash.
• Bug fix: When opening a file with an Add-In function that included parameters with a file path, the path separator "\" was removed.
• Bug fix: In KeyIn Analyses, several bugs made it difficult to select a different analysis as source of initial conditions.
• Bug fix: Analysis names containing certain % or " characters would cause the solver to fail.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio may crash in KeyIn Functions if you create a function with a single point and check the "Cycle" option.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio may crash when saving a file after deleting an analysis.
• Bug fix: Occasionally GeoLicense.exe may crash or may continue running in the background unnecessarily.
• Bug fix: For some types of analysis, results were not saved to the file if the solver was interrupted by pressing the Stop button. The results were available to be examined in Results View, but if GeoStudio was closed and then opened again, the results were no longer available.
• Bug fix: The Result Times list would update itself repeatedly while the analysis was being solved, making it difficult or impossible to select a new time step.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could be unresponsive for long periods of time when disconnected from a license server.
• Bug fix: In some cases GeoStudio may consume too many licenses.
• Bug fix: A more helpful error message is displayed when opening a file without appropriate licenses.
• Bug fix: While solving, the progress bar may disappear unexpectedly.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio may crash when opening a file created by GeoStudio 2007, if GeoStudio 2007 would have displayed an error while opening it.
• Bug fix: When saving a file using the Save As XML option and saving overtop of an existing xml file, all files and subfolders in the same folder may have been deleted.
• Bug fix: In some cases GeoStudio was unable to print.
• Bug fix: If GeoStudio 2007 was uninstalled after GeoStudio 2012 was installed, and if the GeoStudio 2012 installer was no longer available, shortcuts to GeoStudio 2012 would ask for the location of the .msi file.

SLOPE/W

• Change: GeoStudio now allows a material's Total Phi to be set to zero in a staged rapid drawdown analysis.
• Bug fix: The solver may crash while solving a SLOPE/W Finite Element analysis with "Optimize critical slip surface location" enabled.
• Bug fix: The solver may crash when dealing with many slip slices.
• Bug fix: In a staged rapid drawdown analysis where materials above the water table had different unit weights, slice weights could be computed incorrectly (using the wrong water table).
• Bug fix: For the S=f(Overburden) soil strength model, a negative pore water pressure is now ignored in the computation of the effective overburden stress.
• Bug fix: The option to include Ru and BBar values with a piezometric line was not enabled.
• Bug fix: The min and max values were not updating when the standard deviation of a probability distribution function was changed.
• Bug fix: When opening a file created by GeoStudio 2007, probabilistic columns may be displayed in the Slip Surfaces docking window even if it was not a probabilistic analysis.
• Bug fix: When opening a GeoStudio 2007 file with an optimized slip surface, the optimized slip surface would not be displayed in GeoStudio 2012.
• Bug fix: Saving a file in the GeoStudio 2007 format would lose the Unit Weight, Cohesion Prime, and Phi Prime material properties.
• Bug fix: If a SIGMA/W and a SLOPE/W analysis shared a common material, and if in SLOPE/W the material's weight, cohesion, or sigma were changed to a linear function, the edit box for that particular property would no longer be visible under KeyIn Materials in the SIGMA/W analysis.
• Bug fix: Stopping a solve would display an error unnecessarily.
• Bug fix: Reinforcement loads could be computed incorrectly if the load only intersects the passive side of the slip surface.
• Bug fix: In View Slice Information, the Base Shear Mobilized Force and Base Shear Mobilized Stress were not displayed correctly.
• Bug fix: In some cases, viewing slide mass information would produce unnecessary data.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio may crash when defining a Staged Rapid Drawdown analysis, contouring PWP, then changing the PWP option.
• Bug fix: In KeyIn Radius, Grid, or Block, points would be displayed at the wrong coordinates if values were typed into the edit boxes.
• Bug fix: In View Slice Information, when printing, no result data is printed.
• Bug fix: After changing the number of critical slip surfaces to save, you would have to exit GeoStudio, then re-open the file for Results view to display the new number of slip surfaces.
• Bug fix: Pasting data into the KeyIn Point Loads list could cause GeoStudio to crash.
• Bug fix: In some rare cases, ponded water would not be displayed in its entirety.

SEEP/W

• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash after entering invalid values when estimating volumetric water content and K functions.
• Bug fix: In KeyIn Analyses, adding a Convective Heat Transfer analysis or a Density-Dependent analysis could end up creating four new analyses rather than two.

SIGMA/W

• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash after entering invalid values when estimating volumetric water content and K functions.
• Bug fix: If a SIGMA/W and a SLOPE/W analysis shared a common material, and if in SLOPE/W the material's weight, cohesion, or sigma were changed to a linear function, the edit box for that particular property would no longer be visible under KeyIn Materials in the SIGMA/W analysis.

QUAKE/W

• Bug fix: No results were available in View Result Information when selecting a beam.
• Bug fix: The solver may crash when solving an Insitu analysis that uses a Spatial PWP function.

TEMP/W

• Bug fix: In KeyIn Analyses, adding a Convective Heat Transfer analysis could end up creating four new analyses rather than two.

CTRAN/W

• Bug fix: In KeyIn Analyses, adding a Density-Dependent analysis could end up creating four new analyses rather than two.

VADOSE/W

• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash after entering invalid values when estimating volumetric water content and K functions.
• Change: When importing climate data, GeoStudio now ensures the data set has a unique name.

GeoStudio 2012, September 2013 Release

Below are the changes made to GeoStudio since the previous release.

Highlights

Here are some of the main areas of focus for this release:

SLOPE/W - A SLOPE/W analysis can now specify another SLOPE/W analysis as its "parent". This "child" analysis can then obtain its slip surfaces from its parent's saved slip surfaces (the top ten most critical, for example). This feature can be helpful when doing sensitivity or probabilistic analyses in which the analyses can be done only on the saved critical slip surfaces rather than on every slip surface.

We've continued to improve the speed of the SLOPE/W solver on computers with multiple cores.

SLOPE/W's factor of safety graphs have been moved into Draw Graph, and we've expanded the number of slice parameters that can be graphed. GeoStudio will automatically add common graphs when you open or create a file.

The "High Strength" material can now control unit weight in the unsaturated zone.

Legends - Add legends to your drawing for contours, factor of safety contours, and safety maps.

Licensing - We put a lot of effort into making licensing work more smoothly with this release. A new wizard steps you through installing any kind of license. When a license is not available, the error message should be helpful, clear, and offer troubleshooting steps.

To avoid installing a newer version of GeoStudio that is not covered by your license’s maintenance period, Setup will do its best to detect your licenses and warn you about potential license problems before you upgrade. We’ve also updated our web site to more consistently mention what maintenance is required for a specific GeoStudio version.

Functions - Time-based functions that can be "cycled" were sometimes difficult to use. Now they include a "period" parameter to control how long the cycled period is, and they no longer project "backward" in time.

Pictures - We've added support for additional common file types, including JPEG, GIF, PNG, and more. Pictures (and other objects) can be resized while maintaining their original proportions by dragging one of the corner handles in Modify Objects.

Sharing Files Between Versions - Sharing .gsz files with people running earlier versions of GeoStudio? The File Export as Previous Version command now supports saving files in earlier GeoStudio 2012 formats (from before November 2012).

Sorting - Lists of objects (such as the list of materials in KeyIn Materials) are now sorted by the object's name. You can change sorting by clicking on a column header.

All Products

Changes related to legends:

• Feature: Add legends to your drawing for contours, factor of safety contours, and safety map. The tutorial files for each product have also been updated to demonstrate this new feature.

Changes related to licensing:

• Feature: Common licensing-related error messages have been reworded to be more helpful in identifying the problem.
• Feature: The Test button in the License Manager Network Settings tab is now available in both administrator and non-administrator modes, to test the availability of a license server.
• Feature: Improved error messages for some common license activation failures. New License Installation wizard to help install licenses.
• Bug fix: In some cases, GeoStudio could acquire a network license from a server even after the server name was removed from the list of license servers.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio would crash in KeyIn Analyses if you attempted to create an analysis without an appropriate license.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash on shutdown if a connection to a licensing server is lost while solving.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash if it was installed on the same computer as lmadmin, and lmadmin was subsequently uninstalled.
• Bug fix: While upgrading GeoStudio, setup will warn you if any of your licenses' maintenance period does not support the new version of GeoStudio.

Changes related to graphs:

• Feature: In Draw Graph, the tooltip is always displayed if the mouse is in the plot area, making it easier to see coordinates of specific points.
• Feature: GeoStudio now adds pre-defined graphs in Draw Graph for common scenarios.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio may crash when using the Draw Graph command to plot data from the initial conditions of a parent analysis.
• Bug fix: Exiting "Set Locations" in Draw Graph by right clicking would put the dialog into a state where "Set Locations" could not be used for a second time without first closing and re-opening the Draw Graph dialog.

Changes related to functions:

• Feature: Functions that can be "cycled" (where the x value is time) now include a "period" parameter to control how long the cycled period is. This removes the need to re-enter the first data point at the end of the list to ensure a smooth function.
• Change: Functions vs. time are no longer projected "backward". They are only defined beginning at the first user-specified x value.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash in KeyIn Functions in some cases if a function had a single point and was cycled.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash when trying to display invalid log values in KeyIn Functions.

Changes related to pictures:

• Feature: Sketch Pictures now supports additional file types, including JPEG, GIF, PNG, and more.
• Change: The Sketch Pictures dialog box has been reorganized to be easier to use.
• Bug fix: Sketch Pictures that were "reflected" by scaling them using Modify Objects could no longer be selected.
• Change: Adding images using Sketch Images no longer resizes the page, since it is difficult to predict the size of an image upon insertion.
• Feature: In Modify Objects, dragging one of the corner handles will now scale the selected objects proportionally.

Changes related to sharing files:

• Feature: The File Export as Previous Version command now supports saving files in earlier GeoStudio 2012 formats (from before November 2012). This can be useful for sharing files with people running earlier versions of GeoStudio 2012.

Changes related to sorting:

• Feature: Lists of objects (such as the list of materials in KeyIn Materials) can be sorted by clicking on a column header.

Other changes:

• Bug fix: In rare cases, GeoStudio may fail to print because of incompatible printer drivers.
• Bug fix: An analysis could lose all its material assignments if prompted to save an existing file from the Solve Manager.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could become unresponsive when changing to Results View for a transient analysis.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash in KeyIn Analyses when you reference results from an external file and select "(all)" as the time selection.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash when adding a point to an existing line.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash while generating a mesh.
• Bug fix: Results could be invalid when solving an axisymmetric analysis with a central angle of 360 degrees.
• Bug fix: Objects that should not be modified in Results View, such as regions and points, can no longer be selected in Modify Objects.
• Bug fix: Windows Explorer could crash if a folder contains a corrupted .gsz file.
• Bug fix: When two analysis names differed only by case, their results could be invalid and GeoStudio would always indicate their results were out of date. GeoStudio now takes case into account when enforcing the rule that two analyses cannot have the same name.
• Bug fix: Some Sketch commands could not be undone properly using Undo/Redo.

SLOPE/W

• Feature: A SLOPE/W analysis can now specify another SLOPE/W analysis as its "parent". This "child" analysis can then obtain its slip surfaces from its parent's saved slip surfaces (the top ten most critical, for example). This feature can be helpful when doing sensitivity or probabilistic analyses in which the analyses can be done only on the saved critical slip surfaces rather than on every slip surface.
• Change: Access to the slip surface graphs has been moved from the Slip Surfaces docking window to Draw Graph.
• Feature: Four new slice parameters can be graphed in Draw Graph: Reinforcement Load Used, Reinforcement Shear Load Used, Point Load, and Surface Pressure Load.
• Feature: Slope probabilistic analyses now solve more quickly on computers with multiple cores. The most noticeable gains will be seen when running analyses with a large number of Monte Carlo trials and few slip surfaces.
• Feature: Slope analyses with optimization now solve more quickly on computers with multiple cores.
• Feature: The unit weight of material above the water table can now be computed based on the material's Volumetric Water Content function.
• Feature: The maximum number of iterations for a limit equilibrium analysis can now be changed under KeyIn Analyses.
• Feature: The "High Strength" material can now control unit weight in the unsaturated zone under its advanced tab.
• Change: GeoStudio performs a more accurate slice unit weight computation when solving an analysis with a water table.
• Change: The Draw Safety Map and Draw Sensitivity dialogs nows display numbers using the significant figures view preference for Factor of Safety.
• Bug fix: With very small grid spacing, Draw Slip Surface Entry/Exit is not able to drag the entry/exit range.
• Bug fix: User-specified slip surface axis points were being ignored by the solver when using Grid and Radius or Entry and Exit.
• Bug fix: When using spatial variation on a probabilistic Slope analysis, the random sampling was not always correct. Results for Slope analyses using spatial variation may change slightly.
• Bug fix: When opening a file created by GeoStudio 2007, if seismic vertical load is missing, then slice weight and seismic force would be computed incorrectly.
• Bug fix: When Probabilistic/Sensitivity Point Load modifiers were added to more than one analysis, only the first modifier was applied correctly. In such cases you may see incorrect or no probabilistic distribution in the results.
• Bug fix: When cloning an analysis with probabilistic/sensitivity modifiers, modifier tags under "Analysis" were missing.
• Bug fix: Solving a probabilistic analysis with a small number of runs would occasionally cause a crash.
• Bug fix: Sensitivity graphs could include error codes (9xx values) in the graphs.
• Bug fix: Thin slices at the ends of a slip surface could be assigned the wrong material.
• Bug fix: Slice unit weight computations are now more accurate in cases where a different unit weight is used in the unsaturated zone.
• Bug fix: Factor of Safety Contour Labels are now displayed above the slip grid points in Results View.
• Bug fix: View Slice Info and Draw Graph will now work with an Add-In's Custom Parameter Results for slice data.
• Bug fix: In KeyIn Slip Surface Axes, hitting F1 for online help went to the wrong topic.

SIGMA/W

• Bug fix: A material's K0 is no longer restricted to being greater than a calculated K0.
• Bug fix: When a Student or Basic license is used, the "Saturated Zone Only" checkbox in KeyIn Analyses is not set correctly when opening a file.

TEMP/W

• Change: Improved the thermal functions of the provided sample materials, so that the estimated "Unfrozen Water Content Functions" and the estimated "Thermal Conductivity Functions" are smooth in both arithmetic and logarithmic views.

CTRAN/W

• Change: The "Initial Particle Conditions from" option has been removed from KeyIn Analyses.
• Bug fix: In Results View, data about the resultant particle is displayed for the wrong time step (current step + 1 iteration).
• Bug fix: The solver was storing an incorrect value for the nodal Total Head in a particle tracking analysis when transient seepage results were used.

GeoStudio 2014 Preview

• Bug fix: In some cases the TEMP/W solver could generate invalid results, which could subsequently cause GeoStudio to crash in View Result Information.
• Bug fix: The unfrozen volumetric water content displayed in Results View via Draw - Graph of View - Result Information was being set equal to the in situ volumetric water content if the Simplified Thermal Model was used. The unfrozen VWC is now correctly displayed as 0 if the temperature is below the phase change temperature.

GeoStudio 2012, September 2013 Release

Below are the changes made to GeoStudio since the previous release.

Highlights

This is a minor update to the previous September 2013 Release to fix two specific bugs.

SLOPE/W

• Bug fix: Unit weight was not affected by volumetric water content function in the unsaturated zone.

QUAKE/W

• Feature: Structural elements were not being allowed with a Basic license.

GeoStudio 2012, May 2014 Release

Below are the changes made to GeoStudio since the previous release.

Highlights

Here are some of the main areas of focus for this release:

Stability improvements and bug fixes - This release includes many changes that increase stability, improve performance, and fix reported issues in all GeoStudio products.

GeoStudio 2014 Preview Update - The updated GeoStudio 2014 Preview includes support for multi-physics analyses and a new saturated-unsaturated SEEP/W formulation.

Windows 8.1 - This release is officially supported on Windows 8.1.

Licensing - More effort has been put toward making licensing work more quickly and smoothly.

GeoStudio 2014 Preview

The GeoStudio 2014 Preview is included when you install the GeoStudio 2012 May 2014 Release. The primary focus for this development cycle has been on improving support for multi-physics analysis. This release brings forward the saturated-unsaturated SEEP/W formulation into the Preview and the ability to conduct heat advection analysis with flowing water.

Read more about the GeoStudio 2014 Preview here.

All Products

Stability and Performance

• Feature: The solver now runs as a lower priority process, allowing GeoStudio and other applications running on the same computer to be more responsive while solving.
• Feature: The GeoStudio finite element Parallel Direct Equation Solver is now up to 10% faster.
• Feature: Improvements were made to the responsiveness of the application, especially while opening files, solving, and saving.
• Change: To see a full update of each analysis' status in the Solve Manager window, you must now hit the Refresh button. Basic status information such as the last solved time and any verification errors will continue to be updated any time a file is opened or saved; however, testing whether the solution is "out-of-date" can take a long time, so this now only occurs when you click the Refresh button.
• Bug fix: A number of crashes have been fixed that were reported by users choosing to send error information to Microsoft after a crash.

Licensing

• Feature: GeoStudio now supports activated licenses that can be used over Remote Desktop.
• Feature: Improved the stability and responsiveness of license management.
• Change: Basic and Student license restrictions are enforced at the time the file is saved, to prevent accidentally saving a file that can no longer be opened without a full license.
• Bug fix: While upgrading, setup could incorrectly indicate that some licenses would not work with the new release because their maintenance had expired.
• Bug fix: In some cases it was not possible to return a license because the server thought the license had already been returned.
• Bug fix: In some cases a standalone license could end up being installed on a license server, or a server license on a client.
• Feature: An activated license could be broken when major changes have been made to the computer on which it was activated. GeoStudio will now repair it the next time it is run.

DXF

• Feature: When importing a DXF as a picture using Sketch Pictures, the page origin, scale and extents can be adjusted automatically to fit the DXF entities, in a manner similar to File Import Regions.
• Change: Importing a DXF (as an image in Sketch Pictures or as regions in File Import Regions) now uses the User Coordinate System (UCS) of the DXF file if one is defined.
• Bug fix: The Import Regions command for creating regions from DXF files presented incorrect extents values in the Import Regions from DXF Entities dialog box.

Full Unicode Support

• Feature: GeoStudio now fully supports Unicode throughout the product. This means you can use file names in any language. When changing GeoStudio's display language, you therefore are no longer required to change non-Unicode settings on your system. Simply choose a language from the Edit Options dialog and restart GeoStudio.
• Feature: The default language in GeoStudio is now the selected Windows display language (for example, Chinese). If a Windows display language is unsupported by GeoStudio then the language in GeoStudio will default to English.

Images

• Feature: File Export now allows exporting as GIF, PNG, JPEG, and other image formats.

More Changes

• Feature: GeoStudio can now load Add-Ins that were downloaded through a web browser without first having to "Unblock" the Add-In dll.
• Feature: A new Window Reset Layout command has been added, which restores the docking window layout to the original default settings.
• Feature: KeyIn Regions now supports Copy and Paste in the list view.
• Feature: A warning is displayed when changing global units in Set Units and Scale, as this setting does not actually convert any values.
• Feature: Quickly create new projects from a template, directly from the Start Page.
• Feature: The Start Page now includes a link to a "Getting Started" section in the online help.
• Change: When solving some subset of analyses in a file, the progress bar in the system's taskbar now takes into account the number of analyses being solved.

Bug Fixes

• Bug fix: GeoStudio no longer allows an analysis to be deleted while it is being solved, as that can lead to data corruption.
• Bug fix: Contour lines, contour shading, isolines, deformation, and vectors could not always be displayed correctly when choosing specific time steps.
• Bug fix: In the Result Times window, in some cases clicking on an earlier time step would cause all subsequent time steps to disappear from the list.
• Bug fix: Not all results (such as Safety Maps and Contours) were available in Sketch Text.
• Bug fix: When creating a new file, GeoStudio's Start Page was displayed instead of the File Properties view.
• Bug fix: After saving an analysis with exponential time steps, KeyIn Analyses and View Report both show a missing value in Initial Increment Size, unless the default Initial Increment Size value is overridden by a user specified value.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio may crash when trying to generate an invalid mesh.
• Bug fix: Starting the solver from the last saved step would overwrite some previously computed results on the domain, such as the number of unconverged nodes and cumulative values.
• Bug fix: In KeyIn Analyses, line breaks in the Description edit box were lost while saving the file.
• Bug fix: Changing the Element Thickness or Central Angle in Set Units and Scale failed to re-generate the mesh with the new values. This bug is a regression introduced in the June 2013 Release.
• Bug fix: A Javascript error may be displayed in KeyIn Analyses after upgrading to Internet Explorer 11.
• Bug fix: Time increments were not being generated correctly when exponentially decreasing the increment size.
• Bug fix: Several bugs were fixed related to the Undo command.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash when using File Save As and saving to a write-protected drive.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash when changing a function's type from Add-In Function to any other type of function and back again.
• Bug fix: When choosing KeyIn Analyses or exiting GeoStudio, other windows may "flicker".
• Bug fix: In rare cases, cloning an analysis, saving the file, and then re-opening it could display an error about an invalid "CourantNumber"
• Bug fix: When a file containing legends was exported as an older GeoStudio version and then opened in a previous version of GeoStudio, a warning would be displayed.
• Bug fix: The Ground Surface Line could be incorrectly generated when there are null regions internal to the domain.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash generating a mesh when a meshed line cuts at an angle through a surface region.
• Bug fix: In some cases while resizing a window, other controls in the window will not be displayed properly.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash when opening a file created by the original GeoStudio 2012 release in cases where the project contains a large number of regions.
• Bug fix: AddIn functions with fields containing the character sequence "NAN" or "IND" would not be read correctly from file. This could result in failure or wrong answers in analyses using these AddIn functions.

SLOPE/W

• Feature: Added the ability to adjust the height of a piezometric line during a probability or sensitivity analysis. This feature behaves in a similar manner to GeoStudio 2007.
• Feature: The reinforcement length and angle are now displayed in the KeyIn Reinforcements dialog box.
• Bug fix: Slip surfaces obtained from a parent analysis could not be optimized.
• Bug fix: When using the Strength = f(depth) or Strength = f(datum) functions with a large rate of increase, GeoStudio could display an error message before checking for the min and max values.
• Bug fix: When using a parent analysis in SLOPE/W to compute a slip surface for the child analysis, there were some cases where an error would be generated in the solver when using the slip surface in the child analysis.
• Bug fix: In a Monte-Carlo analysis, a regression was introduced in version 8.12 with the use of the C-Phi correlation coefficient. If the "Set Probabilistic Parameters..." dialog was displayed, the correlation data was corrupted and the correlation coefficient was ignored.
• Bug fix: In a Monte-Carlo analysis, the generalized spline distribution would always fail, causing a verify error.
• Bug fix: Contours did not update when switching between analyses.
• Bug fix: For a probabilistic analysis, the units displayed for P(failure) were incorrect in Sketch Text and in the graph of P(failure) vs. Time.
• Bug fix: Computations of localized FOS in a Newmark Analysis were using dynamic rather than static stresses. This bug affected the local stability factor, but did not affect the overall solution.
• Bug fix: The "Ignore seismic load in base shear strength computation" option in KeyIn Seismic Load was not working properly. When the option was used, the shear strength at the base of the slice was incorrect and the force polygon was not closed.
• Bug fix: Slip surfaces may be incorrectly reported as invalid ("air gap") when a steep region line intersects the slip surface.
• Bug fix: Safety map colors were incorrect: the range of colors did not extend all the way to the End Color.
• Bug fix: Some results were unavailable for the optimized slip surface.
• Bug fix: The pore water pressure at the base of a slice may be too large when the material is specified with a BBar and there is a surcharge load or ponded water.
• Bug fix: In some rare cases the solver could crash because a problem generating slip surface slices.
• Bug fix: The solver may never complete when a slip surface passes through only air and bedrock materials.
• Bug fix: The solver could crash when dealing with a large number of slip slices.

SEEP/W

• Feature: The Draw Graph command now allows filtering the convergence plot (X-Conductivity vs. Matric Suction) by each material.
• Change: The maximum value for Initial Rate in the hydraulic under relaxation criteria is now enforced as 1.0.
• Change: The K convergence graph is now based on the actual computed total head of an iteration. In the past, the under-relaxed total head was used. This change better highlights the actual K difference when a solution is not converged.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash when a flux section contained a node that didn't belong to an element.

SIGMA/W

• Change: The maximum value for Initial Rate in the hydraulic under relaxation criteria is now enforced as 1.0.
• Bug fix: When using a function of Y Stress, the Ei and C values were only being updated based on the stresses in the parent analysis; now they are updated at the beginning of each time step.
• Bug fix: The solver could crash in an Insitu analysis when a boundary function is applied.
• Bug fix: When an E vs. Y stress function is used, or when a Total C vs. Total Y Stress function is used, the Y stresses are now based on Insitu stresses rather than on the stresses at the current iteration.

QUAKE/W

• Change: "Insitu Y Total Stress" and "Insitu PWP" are now saved to the .gsz file in the same way as they are by SIGMA/W, so that the insitu stresses computed by QUAKE/W can be used in SIGMA/W for Ei computation when needed.
• Bug fix: The solver was not computing the Liquefaction flag for Initial Static analyses.
• Bug fix: The Cohesion Prime and Phi Prime fields in KeyIn Materials were not displayed and could not be changed.
• Bug fix: Applied boundary forces were computed incorrectly when using stress boundary functions and hydrostatic pressure boundary functions in an equivalent linear dynamic analysis.
• Bug fix: The G Reduction and Damping Ratio functions did not properly handle estimation parameters in U.S. Customary Units.
• Bug fix: The solver may crash when an analysis contains higher order elements with structural beams.
• Bug fix: Axial forces were over-estimated in Equivalent Linear Dynamic analyses.
• Bug fix: The constant stress option, which resulted in an averaging of stresses within an element, has been removed from the insitu analysis. This option had already been removed from all analysis types within SIGMA/W at the original release of Version 8.

AIR/W

• Change: The maximum value for Initial Rate in the hydraulic under relaxation criteria is now enforced as 1.0.

VADOSE/W

• Feature: The Draw Graph command now allows filtering the convergence plot (X-Conductivity vs. Matric Suction) by each material.
• Change: The maximum value for Initial Rate in the hydraulic under relaxation criteria is now enforced as 1.0.
• Bug fix: When splitting a surface line of a surface region which has properties such as materials, boundary conditions etc., these properties were not being correctly applied on the newly generated regions after the split.

GeoStudio 2012, May 2014 Release

Below are the changes made to GeoStudio since the previous release.

Highlights

This is a minor update to the previous May 2014 Release to fix a few specific bugs.

All Products

• Bug fix: When displaying a graph with a value of "distance/area", the units may be displayed incorrectly. This bug was a regression introduced in version 8.13.0.
• Bug fix: Exporting to DXF produced a file that could not be opened by AutoCAD because it contained invalid group codes. This bug was a regression introduced in version 8.13.0.
• Bug fix: Sketch Pictures showed a dialog to adjust page position and scale after selecting a file. This dialog only applies to importing DXF files and should not be shown for other file types. This bug was a regression introduced in version 8.13.0.
• Bug fix: On Windows 8.1 systems FLEXIDs would appear mulitple times in the License Management dialog.

VADOSE/W

• Bug fix: VADOSE/W was unable to solve an analysis with activated regions.

GeoStudio 2012, December 2014 Release

Below are the changes made to GeoStudio since the previous release.

History

• version 8.14.0 - December 8, 2014

• version 8.14.1 - December 17, 2014 - minor update to fix a few specific bugs (listed at the bottom)

Highlights

The main areas of focus for this release include:

SLOPE/W improvements - Improved convergence using a new nonlinear search algorithm; pseudo-static seismic loading; improved slip surface filtering to remove inadmissible slip surfaces.

Workflow improvements - It is easier to switch between analyses or time steps without losing your train of thought, as many dialogs (such as Draw Graph) will now stay active as you make changes outside of them.

DXF improvements - Import DXFs containing cross-sections defined in 3D, and other DXF improvements.

Performance improvements - Faster, smoother rendering; faster performance when working with larger files; and other performance improvements.

New languages - GeoStudio is now available in French; the Spanish translation has been improved; and Simplified Chinese is available as well. Select your language when installing GeoStudio or change it later using Edit Options.

GeoStudio Preview

The GeoStudio Preview is a preview of the next major release of GeoStudio. It is installed along with GeoStudio 2012 to allow you to try it out with your models and provide us with early feedback if you wish.

The third release of the Preview expands the functionality of GeoStudio, improves the robustness of the engineering solvers, and includes a number of user-interface enhancements to improve workflow. The highlights include:

• Redeveloped AIR/W and CTRAN/W finite element products

• A single phase air transfer analysis in AIR/W

• A diffusion-only analysis in CTRAN/W

• A new SEEP/W formulation for modeling density-driven groundwater flow due to spatial variations in temperature

• A more rigorous formulation in SEEP/W for modeling density-driven groundwater flow due to spatial variations in concentration

• A more rigorous formulation in TEMP/W for modeling forced heat convection with flowing air and water

• Particle tracking in any analysis with water flow or air flow

• Flexibility to enter values in different units

Read more about the GeoStudio Preview here.

All Products

Workflow Improvements

• Feature: Previously any dialog or drawing mode had to be closed before switching to a different analysis. Now many of them can remain open. For example, you can now leave the Draw Graph window open as you change analyses, to compare results across analyses. Similarly you can remain in Draw Material mode as you change analyses, to make changes to materials across many analyses.
• Feature: Add "Current" time selection to Draw Graph, to graph using the time step selected globally.
• Feature: The list of time steps in Draw Graph are updated while solving.
• Feature: An "Apply" button has been added to the Set Units and Scale dialog box to make it easier to test changes to the problem's scale and extents.

DXF Improvements

• Feature: DXF import--via File Import Regions and via Sketch Pictures--is now capable of importing 3D DXF files. When a file's entities are determined to fall on a 3D X-Z plane, they are re-oriented to align with the 2D X-Y GeoStudio plane. The orientation of the 3D DXF plane is determined by calculating the normal vector of the 3D elements. This is currently limited to a single plane in 3D-space.
• Feature: When importing regions from a DXF file, GeoStudio was limited to importing only polylines whose "closed" property was set to "yes". This functionality has been extended to include polylines whose start and end points meet. In addition, GeoStudio now supports importing closed HATCH elements as regions.
• Feature: When using Sketch Pictures to import a DXF, GeoStudio now has improved MTEXT handling, including MTEXT with varying formatting, or rotated MTEXT.
• Feature: TrueType fonts in TEXT and MTEXT styles are retained when importing DXF files using Sketch Pictures.
• Feature: An "Apply" button when importing DXF files as regions or as sketch pictures allows adjustments to be made while importing.
• Bug fix: When using Sketch Image to import a DXF file, entities were painted black instead of using the layer color.

Performance Improvements

• Feature: GeoStudio is much more responsive when working with large files that contain many analyses, many time steps, or a large domain mesh. For example, the files will open much faster, the Solver will start running more quickly, GeoStudio is more responsive while solving, and Results view is much more responsive when you switch between analyses.
• Feature: Improved shell extensions allow Windows Explorer to better handle large .gsz files without becoming unresponsive or crashing.
• Feature: Overall rendering speed has been increased by 200-400%. GeoStudio should now be more responsive when contouring large meshes.

New Languages

• Feature: GeoStudio has been translated into French. (The online help and the engineering methodology books are still in English; let us know if you would like these translated.)
• Feature: The Spanish edition has been updated with new translations, including the ability to display reports and object information in Spanish.

Other Changes

• Feature: For users who opt in, GeoStudio will send anonymous feature and usage information to GEO-SLOPE to help improve the software.
• Change: GeoStudio no longer automatically regenerates its mesh if it was created by a previous version. This change allows GeoStudio to open files created by previous versions faster and makes it easier to compare results with those generated by previous versions.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash when editing the Y-Intercept field in KeyIn Functions for a function that does not cross the y-axis.
• Bug fix: When using multiple Custom Locations in Draw Graph, a node selected twice would produce two graph locations.
• Bug fix: Draw Graph may crash when plotting vs. time, for analyses with time units defined in seconds and large time values (larger than 2e+9 seconds or 75 years).
• Bug fix: Text near the page boundaries would sometimes be cut off when printing or copying the entire page.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash in Draw Mesh Properties when changing a region's corner points.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash during mesh regeneration.
• Bug fix: After deleting the Template Folder path and exiting, GeoStudio would crash the next time it was run.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash while accessing files on a network drive that had been disconnected.
• Bug fix: On a computer with IE11 installed, the list of analyses on the "file information" view overlapped the filename.
• Bug fix: In some rare cases, results may fail to be written to file without any error messages.

SLOPE/W

• Feature: SLOPE/W can now use a new “Root Finder” search method to improve the rate of convergence for some types of limit equilibrium stability problems. This method forecasts the required percentage of the inter-slice force function (lambda) based on previous estimates using a non-linear function. The non-linear prediction can sometimes reduce the number of iterations required to find the converged lambda in comparison to the “Linear” search method.
• Feature: In Draw Graph, the graph of Lambda vs. F of S includes a point indicating the factor of safety returned by the search method.
• Feature: When using the Linear search method in SLOPE/W, you can now control the Lambda value at which a solution must be obtained. Previously, this value was always 0.2.
• Feature: Added the option of doing staged undrained strength seismic analysis using a procedure proposed by Duncan, Wright and Wong (1990).
• Feature: Improved the 3-stage rapid drawdown implementation so that the undrained strengths more closely match published results.
• Feature: Improved the responsiveness of the Slip Surfaces window.
• Feature: Free drainage materials can now be modeled in a SLOPE/W staged analysis by setting the R Envelope parameters to equal the material's Cohesion and Phi values.
• Feature: SLOPE/W now displays more detailed error messages when a slip surface cannot converge to a solution.
• Change: "Probability Functions" are now more appropriately titled "Probabilistic Offset Functions". This more clearly declares that each 'Probabilistic Offset Function" is not automatically fit to the range of the parameter. Instead, the range of each function should be applicable to the range of the parameter(s) to which it is applied.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash when performing a probabilistic analysis with spatial variation when no slip slices were generated.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash in View Slice Information while viewing the results of a SLOPE/W analysis that had a geometrically invalid slip surface.
• Bug fix: A 992 error FOS could be generated when the X and Y coordinates were large (in the millions).
• Bug fix: Some FOS error messages were incorrect in the Sensitivity dialog.
• Bug fix: Some analysis methods, such as Janbu and Bishop, were not showing the correct Applied Lambda in View Slice Information.
• Bug fix: In some cases (when the number of starting points is low) the "optimized" factor of safety may be larger than the critical slip surface.
• Bug fix: The Resistance Reduction Factor was not applied in a geosynthetic reinforcement when the Pullout Resistance was calculated from Interface Adhesion and Interface Shear Angle.

SEEP/W

• Bug fix: When using a unit gradient boundary condition and an anisotropic material, any anisotropy with different Ky/Kx ratios would result in the wrong applied flux at the unit gradient boundary.

SIGMA/W

• Feature: The units displayed in the column header for an X-Velocity displacement boundary function were incorrect.

QUAKE/W

• Change: The analysis type "Equivalent Linear with PWP Only" has been removed. Please use "Equivalent Linear Dynamic" instead.
• Bug fix: The units displayed in the column header for an X-Velocity displacement boundary function were incorrect.

CTRAN/W

• Bug fix: In a particle tracking analysis, the user-defined Starting Time was ignored, and always assumed to be zero. This could result in an overestimated travel distance if the actual Starting Time was non-zero.
• Bug fix: The Particle Shading view preference was not working properly.
• Bug fix: "View Particle Information" could show incorrect values when a different current time is selected.
• Bug fix: Choosing View Mass Accumulation from the menu would instead go to View Particle Information. This was a regression introduced in version 8.13.0.

VADOSE/W

• Bug fix: When using a unit gradient boundary condition and an anisotropic material, any anisotropy with different Ky/Kx ratios would result in the wrong applied flux at the unit gradient boundary.

8.14.1.10087

These additional changes were made in version 8.14.1.10087

All Products

• Feature: An "Apply" button has been added to the Set Units and Scale dialog box to make it easier to test changes to the problem's scale and extents.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio fails to correctly delete old files in its temporary file cache. This can generate unexpected behavior while re-solving existing analyses, such as strange contours or a crash when viewing results after re-solving. To work around this problem, close and re-open GeoStudio after solving.
• Bug fix: File Save As would fail if GeoStudio was unable to write to the original file (such as if the current user did not have permissions or the disk was full).

SLOPE/W

• Feature: Draw Graph performance was improved for analyses with a large number of slip surfaces.
• Feature: Further improved the responsiveness of the Slip Surfaces window.
• Bug fix: An unnecessary error message would be displayed when selecting a slip surface for which no results were available. This was a regression introduced in version 8.14.0.
• Bug fix: Some unnecessary warnings were logged while saving a file as an older version.

GeoStudio 2012, September 2013 Release

Below are the changes made to GeoStudio since the previous release.

History

• version 8.12 - 16 Sep 2013

• version 8.12.3 - 29 Oct 2013 - This is a minor update to the previous September 2013 Release to fix two specific bugs.

• version 8.12.4 - September 30, 2015 - minor update to fix a few specific bugs

Highlights

Here are some of the main areas of focus for this release:

SLOPE/W - A SLOPE/W analysis can now specify another SLOPE/W analysis as its "parent". This "child" analysis can then obtain its slip surfaces from its parent's saved slip surfaces (the top ten most critical, for example). This feature can be helpful when doing sensitivity or probabilistic analyses in which the analyses can be done only on the saved critical slip surfaces rather than on every slip surface.

We've continued to improve the speed of the SLOPE/W solver on computers with multiple cores.

SLOPE/W's factor of safety graphs have been moved into Draw Graph, and we've expanded the number of slice parameters that can be graphed. GeoStudio will automatically add common graphs when you open or create a file.

The "High Strength" material can now control unit weight in the unsaturated zone.

Legends - Add legends to your drawing for contours, factor of safety contours, and safety maps.

Licensing - We put a lot of effort into making licensing work more smoothly with this release. A new wizard steps you through installing any kind of license. When a license is not available, the error message should be helpful, clear, and offer troubleshooting steps.

To avoid installing a newer version of GeoStudio that is not covered by your license’s maintenance period, Setup will do its best to detect your licenses and warn you about potential license problems before you upgrade. We’ve also updated our web site to more consistently mention what maintenance is required for a specific GeoStudio version.

Functions - Time-based functions that can be "cycled" were sometimes difficult to use. Now they include a "period" parameter to control how long the cycled period is, and they no longer project "backward" in time.

Pictures - We've added support for additional common file types, including JPEG, GIF, PNG, and more. Pictures (and other objects) can be resized while maintaining their original proportions by dragging one of the corner handles in Modify Objects.

Sharing Files Between Versions - Sharing .gsz files with people running earlier versions of GeoStudio? The File Export as Previous Version command now supports saving files in earlier GeoStudio 2012 formats (from before November 2012).

Sorting - Lists of objects (such as the list of materials in KeyIn Materials) are now sorted by the object's name. You can change sorting by clicking on a column header.

All Products

Changes related to legends:

• Feature: Add legends to your drawing for contours, factor of safety contours, and safety map. The tutorial files for each product have also been updated to demonstrate this new feature.

Changes related to licensing:

• Feature: Common licensing-related error messages have been reworded to be more helpful in identifying the problem.
• Feature: The Test button in the License Manager Network Settings tab is now available in both administrator and non-administrator modes, to test the availability of a license server.
• Feature: Improved error messages for some common license activation failures. New License Installation wizard to help install licenses.
• Bug fix: In some cases, GeoStudio could acquire a network license from a server even after the server name was removed from the list of license servers.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio would crash in KeyIn Analyses if you attempted to create an analysis without an appropriate license.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash on shutdown if a connection to a licensing server is lost while solving.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash if it was installed on the same computer as lmadmin, and lmadmin was subsequently uninstalled.
• Bug fix: While upgrading GeoStudio, setup will warn you if any of your licenses' maintenance period does not support the new version of GeoStudio.

Changes related to graphs:

• Feature: In Draw Graph, the tooltip is always displayed if the mouse is in the plot area, making it easier to see coordinates of specific points.
• Feature: GeoStudio now adds pre-defined graphs in Draw Graph for common scenarios.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio may crash when using the Draw Graph command to plot data from the initial conditions of a parent analysis.
• Bug fix: Exiting "Set Locations" in Draw Graph by right clicking would put the dialog into a state where "Set Locations" could not be used for a second time without first closing and re-opening the Draw Graph dialog.

Changes related to functions:

• Feature: Functions that can be "cycled" (where the x value is time) now include a "period" parameter to control how long the cycled period is. This removes the need to re-enter the first data point at the end of the list to ensure a smooth function.
• Change: Functions vs. time are no longer projected "backward". They are only defined beginning at the first user-specified x value.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash in KeyIn Functions in some cases if a function had a single point and was cycled.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash when trying to display invalid log values in KeyIn Functions.

Changes related to pictures:

• Feature: Sketch Pictures now supports additional file types, including JPEG, GIF, PNG, and more.
• Change: The Sketch Pictures dialog box has been reorganized to be easier to use.
• Bug fix: Sketch Pictures that were "reflected" by scaling them using Modify Objects could no longer be selected.
• Change: Adding images using Sketch Images no longer resizes the page, since it is difficult to predict the size of an image upon insertion.
• Feature: In Modify Objects, dragging one of the corner handles will now scale the selected objects proportionally.

Changes related to sharing files:

• Feature: The File Export as Previous Version command now supports saving files in earlier GeoStudio 2012 formats (from before November 2012). This can be useful for sharing files with people running earlier versions of GeoStudio 2012.

Changes related to sorting:

• Feature: Lists of objects (such as the list of materials in KeyIn Materials) can be sorted by clicking on a column header.

Other changes:

• Bug fix: In rare cases, GeoStudio may fail to print because of incompatible printer drivers.
• Bug fix: An analysis could lose all its material assignments if prompted to save an existing file from the Solve Manager.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could become unresponsive when changing to Results View for a transient analysis.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash in KeyIn Analyses when you reference results from an external file and select "(all)" as the time selection.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash when adding a point to an existing line.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash while generating a mesh.
• Bug fix: Results could be invalid when solving an axisymmetric analysis with a central angle of 360 degrees.
• Bug fix: Objects that should not be modified in Results View, such as regions and points, can no longer be selected in Modify Objects.
• Bug fix: Windows Explorer could crash if a folder contains a corrupted .gsz file.
• Bug fix: When two analysis names differed only by case, their results could be invalid and GeoStudio would always indicate their results were out of date. GeoStudio now takes case into account when enforcing the rule that two analyses cannot have the same name.
• Bug fix: Some Sketch commands could not be undone properly using Undo/Redo.

SLOPE/W

• Feature: A SLOPE/W analysis can now specify another SLOPE/W analysis as its "parent". This "child" analysis can then obtain its slip surfaces from its parent's saved slip surfaces (the top ten most critical, for example). This feature can be helpful when doing sensitivity or probabilistic analyses in which the analyses can be done only on the saved critical slip surfaces rather than on every slip surface.
• Change: Access to the slip surface graphs has been moved from the Slip Surfaces docking window to Draw Graph.
• Feature: Four new slice parameters can be graphed in Draw Graph: Reinforcement Load Used, Reinforcement Shear Load Used, Point Load, and Surface Pressure Load.
• Feature: Slope probabilistic analyses now solve more quickly on computers with multiple cores. The most noticeable gains will be seen when running analyses with a large number of Monte Carlo trials and few slip surfaces.
• Feature: Slope analyses with optimization now solve more quickly on computers with multiple cores.
• Feature: The unit weight of material above the water table can now be computed based on the material's Volumetric Water Content function.
• Feature: The maximum number of iterations for a limit equilibrium analysis can now be changed under KeyIn Analyses.
• Feature: The "High Strength" material can now control unit weight in the unsaturated zone under its advanced tab.
• Change: GeoStudio performs a more accurate slice unit weight computation when solving an analysis with a water table.
• Change: The Draw Safety Map and Draw Sensitivity dialogs nows display numbers using the significant figures view preference for Factor of Safety.
• Bug fix: With very small grid spacing, Draw Slip Surface Entry/Exit is not able to drag the entry/exit range.
• Bug fix: User-specified slip surface axis points were being ignored by the solver when using Grid and Radius or Entry and Exit.
• Bug fix: When using spatial variation on a probabilistic Slope analysis, the random sampling was not always correct. Results for Slope analyses using spatial variation may change slightly.
• Bug fix: When opening a file created by GeoStudio 2007, if seismic vertical load is missing, then slice weight and seismic force would be computed incorrectly.
• Bug fix: When Probabilistic/Sensitivity Point Load modifiers were added to more than one analysis, only the first modifier was applied correctly. In such cases you may see incorrect or no probabilistic distribution in the results.
• Bug fix: When cloning an analysis with probabilistic/sensitivity modifiers, modifier tags under "Analysis" were missing.
• Bug fix: Solving a probabilistic analysis with a small number of runs would occasionally cause a crash.
• Bug fix: Sensitivity graphs could include error codes (9xx values) in the graphs.
• Bug fix: Thin slices at the ends of a slip surface could be assigned the wrong material.
• Bug fix: Slice unit weight computations are now more accurate in cases where a different unit weight is used in the unsaturated zone.
• Bug fix: Factor of Safety Contour Labels are now displayed above the slip grid points in Results View.
• Bug fix: View Slice Info and Draw Graph will now work with an Add-In's Custom Parameter Results for slice data.
• Bug fix: In KeyIn Slip Surface Axes, hitting F1 for online help went to the wrong topic.

SIGMA/W

• Bug fix: A material's K0 is no longer restricted to being greater than a calculated K0.
• Bug fix: When a Student or Basic license is used, the "Saturated Zone Only" checkbox in KeyIn Analyses is not set correctly when opening a file.

TEMP/W

• Change: Improved the thermal functions of the provided sample materials, so that the estimated "Unfrozen Water Content Functions" and the estimated "Thermal Conductivity Functions" are smooth in both arithmetic and logarithmic views.

CTRAN/W

• Change: The "Initial Particle Conditions from" option has been removed from KeyIn Analyses.
• Bug fix: In Results View, data about the resultant particle is displayed for the wrong time step (current step + 1 iteration).
• Bug fix: The solver was storing an incorrect value for the nodal Total Head in a particle tracking analysis when transient seepage results were used.

GeoStudio 2014 Preview

• Bug fix: In some cases the TEMP/W solver could generate invalid results, which could subsequently cause GeoStudio to crash in View Result Information.
• Bug fix: The unfrozen volumetric water content displayed in Results View via Draw - Graph of View - Result Information was being set equal to the in situ volumetric water content if the Simplified Thermal Model was used. The unfrozen VWC is now correctly displayed as 0 if the temperature is below the phase change temperature.

8.12.3.7901

These changes were made in version 8.12.3.7901

SLOPE/W

• Bug fix: Unit weight was not affected by volumetric water content function in the unsaturated zone.

QUAKE/W

• Feature: Structural elements were not being allowed with a Basic license.

8.12.4.11377

These changes were made in version 8.12.4.11377

All Products

• Bug fix: In View Result Information, selecting nodes by dragging a rectangle could sometimes be extremely slow.

SLOPE/W

• Bug fix: Under some rare circumstances, the SLOPE/W solver could stop responding (hang).
• Bug fix: In some cases for a Monte-Carlo analysis, when Cohesion and Phi are both specified in Set Probabilistic Parameters and a C-Phi correlation coefficient is specified, results may be incorrect.

GeoStudio 2012, May 2014 Release

Below are the changes made to GeoStudio since the previous release.

History

• version 8.13.0 - May 7, 2014

• version 8.13.1 - May 17, 2014 - minor update to fix a few specific bugs

• version 8.13.3 - September 21, 2015 - minor update to fix a few specific bugs (listed at the bottom)

Highlights

Here are some of the main areas of focus for this release:

Stability improvements and bug fixes - This release includes many changes that increase stability, improve performance, and fix reported issues in all GeoStudio products.

GeoStudio 2014 Preview Update - The updated GeoStudio 2014 Preview includes support for multi-physics analyses and a new saturated-unsaturated SEEP/W formulation.

Windows 8.1 - This release is officially supported on Windows 8.1.

Licensing - More effort has been put toward making licensing work more quickly and smoothly.

GeoStudio 2014 Preview

The GeoStudio 2014 Preview is included when you install the GeoStudio 2012 May 2014 Release. The primary focus for this development cycle has been on improving support for multi-physics analysis. This release brings forward the saturated-unsaturated SEEP/W formulation into the Preview and the ability to conduct heat advection analysis with flowing water.

Read more about the GeoStudio 2014 Preview here.

All Products

Stability and Performance

• Feature: The solver now runs as a lower priority process, allowing GeoStudio and other applications running on the same computer to be more responsive while solving.
• Feature: The GeoStudio finite element Parallel Direct Equation Solver is now up to 10% faster.
• Feature: Improvements were made to the responsiveness of the application, especially while opening files, solving, and saving.
• Change: To see a full update of each analysis' status in the Solve Manager window, you must now hit the Refresh button. Basic status information such as the last solved time and any verification errors will continue to be updated any time a file is opened or saved; however, testing whether the solution is "out-of-date" can take a long time, so this now only occurs when you click the Refresh button.
• Bug fix: A number of crashes have been fixed that were reported by users choosing to send error information to Microsoft after a crash.

Licensing

• Feature: GeoStudio now supports activated licenses that can be used over Remote Desktop.
• Feature: Improved the stability and responsiveness of license management.
• Change: Basic and Student license restrictions are enforced at the time the file is saved, to prevent accidentally saving a file that can no longer be opened without a full license.
• Bug fix: While upgrading, setup could incorrectly indicate that some licenses would not work with the new release because their maintenance had expired.
• Bug fix: In some cases it was not possible to return a license because the server thought the license had already been returned.
• Bug fix: In some cases a standalone license could end up being installed on a license server, or a server license on a client.
• Feature: An activated license could be broken when major changes have been made to the computer on which it was activated. GeoStudio will now repair it the next time it is run.

DXF

• Feature: When importing a DXF as a picture using Sketch Pictures, the page origin, scale and extents can be adjusted automatically to fit the DXF entities, in a manner similar to File Import Regions.
• Change: Importing a DXF (as an image in Sketch Pictures or as regions in File Import Regions) now uses the User Coordinate System (UCS) of the DXF file if one is defined.
• Bug fix: The Import Regions command for creating regions from DXF files presented incorrect extents values in the Import Regions from DXF Entities dialog box.

Full Unicode Support

• Feature: GeoStudio now fully supports Unicode throughout the product. This means you can use file names in any language. When changing GeoStudio's display language, you therefore are no longer required to change non-Unicode settings on your system. Simply choose a language from the Edit Options dialog and restart GeoStudio.
• Feature: The default language in GeoStudio is now the selected Windows display language (for example, Chinese). If a Windows display language is unsupported by GeoStudio then the language in GeoStudio will default to English.

Images

• Feature: File Export now allows exporting as GIF, PNG, JPEG, and other image formats.

More Changes

• Feature: GeoStudio can now load Add-Ins that were downloaded through a web browser without first having to "Unblock" the Add-In dll.
• Feature: A new Window Reset Layout command has been added, which restores the docking window layout to the original default settings.
• Feature: KeyIn Regions now supports Copy and Paste in the list view.
• Feature: A warning is displayed when changing global units in Set Units and Scale, as this setting does not actually convert any values.
• Feature: Quickly create new projects from a template, directly from the Start Page.
• Feature: The Start Page now includes a link to a "Getting Started" section in the online help.
• Change: When solving some subset of analyses in a file, the progress bar in the system's taskbar now takes into account the number of analyses being solved.

Bug Fixes

• Bug fix: GeoStudio no longer allows an analysis to be deleted while it is being solved, as that can lead to data corruption.
• Bug fix: Contour lines, contour shading, isolines, deformation, and vectors could not always be displayed correctly when choosing specific time steps.
• Bug fix: In the Result Times window, in some cases clicking on an earlier time step would cause all subsequent time steps to disappear from the list.
• Bug fix: Not all results (such as Safety Maps and Contours) were available in Sketch Text.
• Bug fix: When creating a new file, GeoStudio's Start Page was displayed instead of the File Properties view.
• Bug fix: After saving an analysis with exponential time steps, KeyIn Analyses and View Report both show a missing value in Initial Increment Size, unless the default Initial Increment Size value is overridden by a user specified value.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio may crash when trying to generate an invalid mesh.
• Bug fix: Starting the solver from the last saved step would overwrite some previously computed results on the domain, such as the number of unconverged nodes and cumulative values.
• Bug fix: In KeyIn Analyses, line breaks in the Description edit box were lost while saving the file.
• Bug fix: Changing the Element Thickness or Central Angle in Set Units and Scale failed to re-generate the mesh with the new values. This bug is a regression introduced in the June 2013 Release.
• Bug fix: A Javascript error may be displayed in KeyIn Analyses after upgrading to Internet Explorer 11.
• Bug fix: Time increments were not being generated correctly when exponentially decreasing the increment size.
• Bug fix: Several bugs were fixed related to the Undo command.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash when using File Save As and saving to a write-protected drive.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash when changing a function's type from Add-In Function to any other type of function and back again.
• Bug fix: When choosing KeyIn Analyses or exiting GeoStudio, other windows may "flicker".
• Bug fix: In rare cases, cloning an analysis, saving the file, and then re-opening it could display an error about an invalid "CourantNumber"
• Bug fix: When a file containing legends was exported as an older GeoStudio version and then opened in a previous version of GeoStudio, a warning would be displayed.
• Bug fix: The Ground Surface Line could be incorrectly generated when there are null regions internal to the domain.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash generating a mesh when a meshed line cuts at an angle through a surface region.
• Bug fix: In some cases while resizing a window, other controls in the window will not be displayed properly.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash when opening a file created by the original GeoStudio 2012 release in cases where the project contains a large number of regions.
• Bug fix: AddIn functions with fields containing the character sequence "NAN" or "IND" would not be read correctly from file. This could result in failure or wrong answers in analyses using these AddIn functions.

SLOPE/W

• Feature: Added the ability to adjust the height of a piezometric line during a probability or sensitivity analysis. This feature behaves in a similar manner to GeoStudio 2007.
• Feature: The reinforcement length and angle are now displayed in the KeyIn Reinforcements dialog box.
• Bug fix: Slip surfaces obtained from a parent analysis could not be optimized.
• Bug fix: When using the Strength = f(depth) or Strength = f(datum) functions with a large rate of increase, GeoStudio could display an error message before checking for the min and max values.
• Bug fix: When using a parent analysis in SLOPE/W to compute a slip surface for the child analysis, there were some cases where an error would be generated in the solver when using the slip surface in the child analysis.
• Bug fix: In a Monte-Carlo analysis, a regression was introduced in version 8.12 with the use of the C-Phi correlation coefficient. If the "Set Probabilistic Parameters..." dialog was displayed, the correlation data was corrupted and the correlation coefficient was ignored.
• Bug fix: In a Monte-Carlo analysis, the generalized spline distribution would always fail, causing a verify error.
• Bug fix: Contours did not update when switching between analyses.
• Bug fix: For a probabilistic analysis, the units displayed for P(failure) were incorrect in Sketch Text and in the graph of P(failure) vs. Time.
• Bug fix: Computations of localized FOS in a Newmark Analysis were using dynamic rather than static stresses. This bug affected the local stability factor, but did not affect the overall solution.
• Bug fix: The "Ignore seismic load in base shear strength computation" option in KeyIn Seismic Load was not working properly. When the option was used, the shear strength at the base of the slice was incorrect and the force polygon was not closed.
• Bug fix: Slip surfaces may be incorrectly reported as invalid ("air gap") when a steep region line intersects the slip surface.
• Bug fix: Safety map colors were incorrect: the range of colors did not extend all the way to the End Color.
• Bug fix: Some results were unavailable for the optimized slip surface.
• Bug fix: The pore water pressure at the base of a slice may be too large when the material is specified with a BBar and there is a surcharge load or ponded water.
• Bug fix: In some rare cases the solver could crash because a problem generating slip surface slices.
• Bug fix: The solver may never complete when a slip surface passes through only air and bedrock materials.
• Bug fix: The solver could crash when dealing with a large number of slip slices.

SEEP/W

• Feature: The Draw Graph command now allows filtering the convergence plot (X-Conductivity vs. Matric Suction) by each material.
• Change: The maximum value for Initial Rate in the hydraulic under relaxation criteria is now enforced as 1.0.
• Change: The K convergence graph is now based on the actual computed total head of an iteration. In the past, the under-relaxed total head was used. This change better highlights the actual K difference when a solution is not converged.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash when a flux section contained a node that didn't belong to an element.

SIGMA/W

• Change: The maximum value for Initial Rate in the hydraulic under relaxation criteria is now enforced as 1.0.
• Bug fix: When using a function of Y Stress, the Ei and C values were only being updated based on the stresses in the parent analysis; now they are updated at the beginning of each time step.
• Bug fix: The solver could crash in an Insitu analysis when a boundary function is applied.
• Bug fix: When an E vs. Y stress function is used, or when a Total C vs. Total Y Stress function is used, the Y stresses are now based on Insitu stresses rather than on the stresses at the current iteration.

QUAKE/W

• Change: "Insitu Y Total Stress" and "Insitu PWP" are now saved to the .gsz file in the same way as they are by SIGMA/W, so that the insitu stresses computed by QUAKE/W can be used in SIGMA/W for Ei computation when needed.
• Bug fix: The solver was not computing the Liquefaction flag for Initial Static analyses.
• Bug fix: The Cohesion Prime and Phi Prime fields in KeyIn Materials were not displayed and could not be changed.
• Bug fix: Applied boundary forces were computed incorrectly when using stress boundary functions and hydrostatic pressure boundary functions in an equivalent linear dynamic analysis.
• Bug fix: The G Reduction and Damping Ratio functions did not properly handle estimation parameters in U.S. Customary Units.
• Bug fix: The solver may crash when an analysis contains higher order elements with structural beams.
• Bug fix: Axial forces were over-estimated in Equivalent Linear Dynamic analyses.
• Bug fix: The constant stress option, which resulted in an averaging of stresses within an element, has been removed from the insitu analysis. This option had already been removed from all analysis types within SIGMA/W at the original release of Version 8.

AIR/W

• Change: The maximum value for Initial Rate in the hydraulic under relaxation criteria is now enforced as 1.0.

VADOSE/W

• Feature: The Draw Graph command now allows filtering the convergence plot (X-Conductivity vs. Matric Suction) by each material.
• Change: The maximum value for Initial Rate in the hydraulic under relaxation criteria is now enforced as 1.0.
• Bug fix: When splitting a surface line of a surface region which has properties such as materials, boundary conditions etc., these properties were not being correctly applied on the newly generated regions after the split.

8.13.1.9253

These changes were made in version 8.13.1.9253

All Products

• Bug fix: When displaying a graph with a value of "distance/area", the units may be displayed incorrectly. This bug was a regression introduced in version 8.13.0.
• Bug fix: Exporting to DXF produced a file that could not be opened by AutoCAD because it contained invalid group codes. This bug was a regression introduced in version 8.13.0.
• Bug fix: Sketch Pictures showed a dialog to adjust page position and scale after selecting a file. This dialog only applies to importing DXF files and should not be shown for other file types. This bug was a regression introduced in version 8.13.0.
• Bug fix: On Windows 8.1 systems FLEXIDs would appear mulitple times in the License Management dialog.

VADOSE/W

• Bug fix: VADOSE/W was unable to solve an analysis with activated regions.

8.13.3.11312

These additional changes were made in version 8.13.3.11312

Highlights

This is a minor update to the previous May 2014 Release to fix a few specific problems.

All Products

• Bug fix: In View Result Information, selecting nodes by dragging a rectangle could sometimes be extremely slow.

SLOPE/W

• Bug fix: Under some rare circumstances, the SLOPE/W solver could stop responding (hang).
• Bug fix: In some cases for a Monte-Carlo analysis, when Cohesion and Phi are both specified in Set Probabilistic Parameters and a C-Phi correlation coefficient is specified, results may be incorrect.

GeoStudio 2012, December 2014 Release

Below are the changes made to GeoStudio since the previous release.

History

• version 8.14.0 - December 8, 2014

• version 8.14.1 - December 17, 2014 - minor update to fix a few specific bugs (listed at the bottom)

• version 8.14.2 - September 21, 2015 - minor update to fix a few specific bugs (listed at the bottom)

Highlights

The main areas of focus for this release include:

SLOPE/W improvements - Improved convergence using a new nonlinear search algorithm; pseudo-static seismic loading; improved slip surface filtering to remove inadmissible slip surfaces.

Workflow improvements - It is easier to switch between analyses or time steps without losing your train of thought, as many dialogs (such as Draw Graph) will now stay active as you make changes outside of them.

DXF improvements - Import DXFs containing cross-sections defined in 3D, and other DXF improvements.

Performance improvements - Faster, smoother rendering; faster performance when working with larger files; and other performance improvements.

New languages - GeoStudio is now available in French; the Spanish translation has been improved; and Simplified Chinese is available as well. Select your language when installing GeoStudio or change it later using Edit Options.

GeoStudio Preview

The GeoStudio Preview is a preview of the next major release of GeoStudio. It is installed along with GeoStudio 2012 to allow you to try it out with your models and provide us with early feedback if you wish.

The third release of the Preview expands the functionality of GeoStudio, improves the robustness of the engineering solvers, and includes a number of user-interface enhancements to improve workflow. The highlights include:

• Redeveloped AIR/W and CTRAN/W finite element products

• A single phase air transfer analysis in AIR/W

• A diffusion-only analysis in CTRAN/W

• A new SEEP/W formulation for modeling density-driven groundwater flow due to spatial variations in temperature

• A more rigorous formulation in SEEP/W for modeling density-driven groundwater flow due to spatial variations in concentration

• A more rigorous formulation in TEMP/W for modeling forced heat convection with flowing air and water

• Particle tracking in any analysis with water flow or air flow

• Flexibility to enter values in different units

Read more about the GeoStudio Preview here.

All Products

Workflow Improvements

• Feature: Previously any dialog or drawing mode had to be closed before switching to a different analysis. Now many of them can remain open. For example, you can now leave the Draw Graph window open as you change analyses, to compare results across analyses. Similarly you can remain in Draw Material mode as you change analyses, to make changes to materials across many analyses.
• Feature: Add "Current" time selection to Draw Graph, to graph using the time step selected globally.
• Feature: The list of time steps in Draw Graph are updated while solving.
• Feature: An "Apply" button has been added to the Set Units and Scale dialog box to make it easier to test changes to the problem's scale and extents.

DXF Improvements

• Feature: DXF import--via File Import Regions and via Sketch Pictures--is now capable of importing 3D DXF files. When a file's entities are determined to fall on a 3D X-Z plane, they are re-oriented to align with the 2D X-Y GeoStudio plane. The orientation of the 3D DXF plane is determined by calculating the normal vector of the 3D elements. This is currently limited to a single plane in 3D-space.
• Feature: When importing regions from a DXF file, GeoStudio was limited to importing only polylines whose "closed" property was set to "yes". This functionality has been extended to include polylines whose start and end points meet. In addition, GeoStudio now supports importing closed HATCH elements as regions.
• Feature: When using Sketch Pictures to import a DXF, GeoStudio now has improved MTEXT handling, including MTEXT with varying formatting, or rotated MTEXT.
• Feature: TrueType fonts in TEXT and MTEXT styles are retained when importing DXF files using Sketch Pictures.
• Feature: An "Apply" button when importing DXF files as regions or as sketch pictures allows adjustments to be made while importing.
• Bug fix: When using Sketch Image to import a DXF file, entities were painted black instead of using the layer color.

Performance Improvements

• Feature: GeoStudio is much more responsive when working with large files that contain many analyses, many time steps, or a large domain mesh. For example, the files will open much faster, the Solver will start running more quickly, GeoStudio is more responsive while solving, and Results view is much more responsive when you switch between analyses.
• Feature: Improved shell extensions allow Windows Explorer to better handle large .gsz files without becoming unresponsive or crashing.
• Feature: Overall rendering speed has been increased by 200-400%. GeoStudio should now be more responsive when contouring large meshes.

New Languages

• Feature: GeoStudio has been translated into French. (The online help and the engineering methodology books are still in English; let us know if you would like these translated.)
• Feature: The Spanish edition has been updated with new translations, including the ability to display reports and object information in Spanish.

Other Changes

• Feature: For users who opt in, GeoStudio will send anonymous feature and usage information to GEO-SLOPE to help improve the software.
• Change: GeoStudio no longer automatically regenerates its mesh if it was created by a previous version. This change allows GeoStudio to open files created by previous versions faster and makes it easier to compare results with those generated by previous versions.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash when editing the Y-Intercept field in KeyIn Functions for a function that does not cross the y-axis.
• Bug fix: When using multiple Custom Locations in Draw Graph, a node selected twice would produce two graph locations.
• Bug fix: Draw Graph may crash when plotting vs. time, for analyses with time units defined in seconds and large time values (larger than 2e+9 seconds or 75 years).
• Bug fix: Text near the page boundaries would sometimes be cut off when printing or copying the entire page.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash in Draw Mesh Properties when changing a region's corner points.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash during mesh regeneration.
• Bug fix: After deleting the Template Folder path and exiting, GeoStudio would crash the next time it was run.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash while accessing files on a network drive that had been disconnected.
• Bug fix: On a computer with IE11 installed, the list of analyses on the "file information" view overlapped the filename.
• Bug fix: In some rare cases, results may fail to be written to file without any error messages.

SLOPE/W

• Feature: SLOPE/W can now use a new “Root Finder” search method to improve the rate of convergence for some types of limit equilibrium stability problems. This method forecasts the required percentage of the inter-slice force function (lambda) based on previous estimates using a non-linear function. The non-linear prediction can sometimes reduce the number of iterations required to find the converged lambda in comparison to the “Linear” search method.
• Feature: In Draw Graph, the graph of Lambda vs. F of S includes a point indicating the factor of safety returned by the search method.
• Feature: When using the Linear search method in SLOPE/W, you can now control the Lambda value at which a solution must be obtained. Previously, this value was always 0.2.
• Feature: Added the option of doing staged undrained strength seismic analysis using a procedure proposed by Duncan, Wright and Wong (1990).
• Feature: Improved the 3-stage rapid drawdown implementation so that the undrained strengths more closely match published results.
• Feature: Improved the responsiveness of the Slip Surfaces window.
• Feature: Free drainage materials can now be modeled in a SLOPE/W staged analysis by setting the R Envelope parameters to equal the material's Cohesion and Phi values.
• Feature: SLOPE/W now displays more detailed error messages when a slip surface cannot converge to a solution.
• Change: "Probability Functions" are now more appropriately titled "Probabilistic Offset Functions". This more clearly declares that each 'Probabilistic Offset Function" is not automatically fit to the range of the parameter. Instead, the range of each function should be applicable to the range of the parameter(s) to which it is applied.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash when performing a probabilistic analysis with spatial variation when no slip slices were generated.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash in View Slice Information while viewing the results of a SLOPE/W analysis that had a geometrically invalid slip surface.
• Bug fix: A 992 error FOS could be generated when the X and Y coordinates were large (in the millions).
• Bug fix: Some FOS error messages were incorrect in the Sensitivity dialog.
• Bug fix: Some analysis methods, such as Janbu and Bishop, were not showing the correct Applied Lambda in View Slice Information.
• Bug fix: In some cases (when the number of starting points is low) the "optimized" factor of safety may be larger than the critical slip surface.
• Bug fix: The Resistance Reduction Factor was not applied in a geosynthetic reinforcement when the Pullout Resistance was calculated from Interface Adhesion and Interface Shear Angle.

SEEP/W

• Bug fix: When using a unit gradient boundary condition and an anisotropic material, any anisotropy with different Ky/Kx ratios would result in the wrong applied flux at the unit gradient boundary.

SIGMA/W

• Feature: The units displayed in the column header for an X-Velocity displacement boundary function were incorrect.

QUAKE/W

• Change: The analysis type "Equivalent Linear with PWP Only" has been removed. Please use "Equivalent Linear Dynamic" instead.
• Bug fix: The units displayed in the column header for an X-Velocity displacement boundary function were incorrect.

CTRAN/W

• Bug fix: In a particle tracking analysis, the user-defined Starting Time was ignored, and always assumed to be zero. This could result in an overestimated travel distance if the actual Starting Time was non-zero.
• Bug fix: The Particle Shading view preference was not working properly.
• Bug fix: "View Particle Information" could show incorrect values when a different current time is selected.
• Bug fix: Choosing View Mass Accumulation from the menu would instead go to View Particle Information. This was a regression introduced in version 8.13.0.

VADOSE/W

• Bug fix: When using a unit gradient boundary condition and an anisotropic material, any anisotropy with different Ky/Kx ratios would result in the wrong applied flux at the unit gradient boundary.

8.14.1.10087

These additional changes were made in version 8.14.1.10087

All Products

• Feature: An "Apply" button has been added to the Set Units and Scale dialog box to make it easier to test changes to the problem's scale and extents.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio fails to correctly delete old files in its temporary file cache. This can generate unexpected behavior while re-solving existing analyses, such as strange contours or a crash when viewing results after re-solving. To work around this problem, close and re-open GeoStudio after solving.
• Bug fix: File Save As would fail if GeoStudio was unable to write to the original file (such as if the current user did not have permissions or the disk was full).

SLOPE/W

• Feature: Draw Graph performance was improved for analyses with a large number of slip surfaces.
• Feature: Further improved the responsiveness of the Slip Surfaces window.
• Bug fix: An unnecessary error message would be displayed when selecting a slip surface for which no results were available. This was a regression introduced in version 8.14.0.
• Bug fix: Some unnecessary warnings were logged while saving a file as an older version.

8.14.2.11317

These additional changes were made in version 8.14.2.11317

All Products

• Bug fix: In View Result Information, selecting nodes by dragging a rectangle could sometimes be extremely slow.
• Bug fix: Imported WMF pictures were not displayed properly. (This was a regression introduced in 8.14.0.)
• Bug fix: With the "Mesh" View Preference turned on, drawing a material on a region which previously did not have a material, the mesh would not be displayed in that region. The problem could be worked around using View - Redraw, manually regenerating the mesh using Draw - Mesh Properties, saving the file, or solving. (This was a regression introduced in 8.14.0.)
• Bug fix: GeoStudio may crash when opening a file containing non-latin characters on a computer with a different locale setting. (This was a regression introduced in 8.14.0.)

SLOPE/W

• Bug fix: In some cases for a Monte-Carlo analysis, when Cohesion and Phi are both specified in Set Probabilistic Parameters and a C-Phi correlation coefficient is specified, results may be incorrect.
• Bug fix: Under some rare circumstances, the SLOPE/W solver could stop responding (hang).
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash when viewing results from a GeoStudio 2007 file. (This was a regression introduced in 8.14.0.)
• Bug fix: In some cases for a Monte-Carlo analysis, when Cohesion and Phi are both specified in Set Probabilistic Parameters and a C-Phi correlation coefficient is specified, results may be incorrect.

SEEP/W

• Change: The Plan View analysis in SEEP/W ensured that the saturated conductivity of a K-function was used even if the pore-water pressure was negative. Although the restriction is theoretically correct, it prevented an add-in material model from receiving the actual solved pore-water pressure when it was negative. The restriction was removed because the Saturated Only model can be used in place of the Saturated-Unsaturated material model to ensure the saturated conductivity is used in the Plan View analysis.

TEMP/W

• Bug fix: GeoStudio may crash when defining a Convective Surface Fluid temperature function. (This was a regression introduced in 8.13.0.)
• Bug fix: Climate data import did not work. (This was a regression introduced in 8.14.0.)

VADOSE/W

• Bug fix: GeoStudio may crash when defining a Convective Surface Fluid temperature function. (This was a regression introduced in 8.13.0.)
• Bug fix: Climate data import did not work. (This was a regression introduced in 8.14.0.)

GeoStudio 2012, August 2015 Release

Below are the changes made to GeoStudio since the previous release.

History

• version 8.15.0 - August 24, 2015

• version 8.15.1 - August 28, 2015 - minor update to fix a few specific issues (listed at the bottom)

• version 8.15.2 - September 18, 2015 - minor update to fix a few specific issues (listed at the bottom)

• version 8.15.3 - September 23, 2015 - minor update to fix a few specific issues (listed at the bottom)

• version 8.15.4 - November 2, 2015 - minor update to fix a few specific issues (listed at the bottom)

Highlights

The main areas of focus for this release include:

Improvements to SLOPE/W:

    • Full support for Partial Factor analysis, including limit state design approaches such as Eurocode 7 and British Standard 8006.

    • Improvements to slip surface inspection and visualization using color maps.

New region definition options:

    • Split regions into smaller regions and merge adjacent regions together.

    • Draw regions that overlap with existing regions, and they will be automatically merged.

    • Draw new floating polygon regions that can be moved over domain regions.

    • Import regions from AutoCAD DWG files or GeoStudio files.

Improvements working with materials:

    • Apply materials across all analyses at once.

    • Add a material legend that displays material colors.

Other changes:

    • Use the keyboard while drawing objects to enter exact coordinates, lengths, or angles. Drawing with the mouse now displays angles and lengths while you draw.

    • Add dimension lines to a drawing using Sketch Dimensions.

    • Remote Desktop is supported for all license types.

    • GeoStudio is officially supported on Windows 10.

GeoStudio Preview

The GeoStudio Preview is a preview of the next major release of GeoStudio. It is installed along with GeoStudio 2012 to allow you to try it out with your models and provide us with early feedback if you wish.

The fourth release of the Preview includes a new Gas Transfer formulation in CTRAN/W and Vapor Transfer in SEEP/W, along with additional multi-physics capabiliites. Support has also been added for SLOPE/W, SIGMA/W, and QUAKE/W analyses.

Read more about the GeoStudio Preview here.

All Products

• Feature: GeoStudio 2012 now supports Remote Desktop use.
• Feature: Regions and pictures can now be imported from AutoCAD DWG files, not just DXF.
• Feature: GeoStudio can now import region geometry from other GeoStudio files (.gsz or .xml), or from third-party applications that export to GeoStudio's file format.
• Feature: Adjacent regions can now be merged using the Draw Merge Regions command.
• Feature: Regions can now be split into smaller regions using the Draw Split Regions command.
• Feature: Draw Regions will now merge a new region with any overlapping regions, rather than displaying an error. Draw Regions will now only snap along an existing region boundary while the Ctrl key is pressed.
• Feature: Contours and multiple slip surface lines have the option to extend colors beyond the defined range.
• Feature: Materials can be applied to all analyses at once with the new "Apply to All Analyses" option in Draw Materials and Draw Surface Materials.
• Feature: Materials and functions can be copied to the clipboard from KeyIn Materials and the various KeyIn Functions, then pasted into another document. When a material is copied, all the functions it uses are copied as well.
• Feature: Materials can be applied to all analyses at once with the new "Apply to All Analyses" option in Draw Materials and Draw Surface Materials.
• Feature: Key In Regions now has an additional column in the list of regions which shows the specific type of region. Key In Points now indicates the distinction between unpinned domain points and points that are associated with floating regions.
• Feature: Zooming is more responsive, especially in larger projects.
• Feature: GeoStudio will be more responsive when tabbing through items without making changes.
• Feature: In Draw Graph, the tooltip can be displayed or hidden using a context menu.
• Feature: The View Object Information dialog will now remain open while switching analyses.
• Feature: The View Result Information dialog will now remain open while switching analyses.
• Feature: The View Slice Information and View Slide Mass dialogs will now remain open while switching analyses.
• Feature: GeoStudio is officially supported on Windows 10
• Change: When importing regions from a DXF or DWG file, an error message will be displayed if the source file contains regions on multiple planes.
• Change: A new "Viewing Results" section has been added to the Online Help.
• Bug fix: In KeyIn Analyses, when trying to change only the case of letters in an analysis name, an error would be displayed about duplicate analysis names.
• Bug fix: When a file with no regions was exported as a GeoStudio 2007 file, GeoStudio 2007 would display an error about some unexpected tags.
• Bug fix: If Draw Materials is started in a finite element analysis and the "Lines" option is selected, then a Slope analysis is activated, the Draw Materials dialog should switch back to the "Regions" option.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash in Results view if no results are available.
• Bug fix: In View Result Information, selecting nodes by dragging a rectangle could sometimes be extremely slow.
• Bug fix: In some cases, opening a file created by GeoStudio 2004 (version 6) would end up creating several boundary conditions and contours with identical names.
• Bug fix: Hitting "Esc" in the "Set Locations" mode of KeyIn Spatial Functions would exit the KeyIn Spatial Functions mode entirely rather than just exiting the Set Locations mode and reverting to the main dialog.
• Bug fix: Text on toolbar buttons was not always displayed in the correct language.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio may crash when defining a Convective Surface Fluid temperature function. (This was a regression introduced in 8.13.0.)
• Bug fix: Imported WMF pictures were not displayed properly. (This was a regression introduced in 8.14.0.)
• Bug fix: In some cases the Solve Manager window could incorrectly report that an analysis had "Results out of date" even immediately after solving it.
• Bug fix: Downgrade reports created by GeoCmd were empty.
• Bug fix: With the "Mesh" View Preference turned on, drawing a material on a region which previously did not have a material, the mesh would not be displayed in that region. The problem could be worked around using View - Redraw, manually regenerating the mesh using Draw - Mesh Properties, saving the file, or solving. (This was a regression introduced in 8.14.0.)
• Bug fix: An AddIn's time parameters (such as eElaspedTime) could be incorrect if many analyses with different analysis kinds (SEEP/W, SLOPE/W, etc) are solved simultaneously.
• Bug fix: Child analysis of a Convective or Density Dependent analysis fails to solve with error, "Cannot read the results file required to solve this analysis. File not found: ..."
• Bug fix: Changes to view preference does not affect "View Object Info" mouse mode.
• Bug fix: The Esc key did not exit the current drawing mode. (This was a regression introduced in 8.14.0.)
• Bug fix: A crash may occur while drawing regions with surface layers turned on.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio may crash when opening a file containing non-latin characters on a computer with a different locale setting. (This was a regression introduced in 8.14.0.)
• Bug fix: In some cases a .GszXmlBackup file was not generated. This is a temporary backup file generated while the .gsz is being modified, in case the .gsz gets corrupted.
• Bug fix: In some cases GeoStudio did not allow modification of surface regions using Modify Objects or Draw Surface Layers. The error "Unable to generate surface region and regions above it" was displayed. This was a regression introduced in version 8.14. In some cases GeoStudio would crash while attempting to mesh surface regions.

SLOPE/W

• Feature: SLOPE/W now includes full support for Partial Factor analysis, including limit state design approaches such as Eurocode 7 and British Standard 8006. Read the engineering manual "Stability Modeling with SLOPE/W" for details.
• Feature: SLOPE/W now includes new slip surface inspection and visualization options. Use the new Draw Slip Surface Color Map command to display slip surfaces, contours, and the safety map using the same color ranges.
• Feature: Display all potential slip surfaces at once, color-coded according to their factor of safety.
• Feature: The Slip Surfaces docking window now allows you to filter the list of slip surfaces to a specific range.
• Feature: Select a slip surface in Results view by clicking points of the slip surface definition (such as a center point, or an entry or exit point). The most critical slip surface associated with that definition will be selected.
• Feature: Get fisual feedback about slip surfaces while graphically selecting them, including a tooltip showing factor of safety and a graphical representation showing the slip surface center and radius lines.
• Feature: More control over view preferences in Results view: choose whether to display the current slip surface (includes the slip surface line itself, shading, slices, and factor of safety label); choose whether to display the critical slip surface above all others; and choose whether to display the slip surface definition objects.
• Feature: Reinforcement in the passive zone is now applied if the resulting reinforcement load is acting in a direction causing the slope to give a higher factor of safety.
• Feature: Reinforcement properties can now be included in probabilistic and sensitivity analyses.
• Feature: Newmark analyses now display KMax - the maximum average acceleration from the side of the acceleration record with the largest area above (or below) the yield acceleration. Such analyses may return improved velocity and displacement values in some rare cases.
• Feature: The Slip Surfaces docking window allows you to choose what to do with the "current" slip surface when you change analyses: either keep the same slip surface number selected, or switch to the critical slip surface of the new analysis.
• Feature: The Slip Surfaces docking window allows you to type a slip surface number to select it.
• Feature: The Slip Surfaces docking window is now more responsive when displaying a large number of slip surfaces.
• Change: Water surcharge now is excluded in the pore-water pressure calculations using B-bar/Ru coefficients
• Change: Speed improvements were made to Results View for analyses with a large number of slip surfaces.
• Change: Many SLOPE/W example files have been updated.
• Bug fix: Under some rare circumstances, the SLOPE/W solver could stop responding (hang).
• Bug fix: Graphs displayed using Draw Sensitivity or Draw Probability did not update when the current slip surface changed.
• Bug fix: Graphs displayed using Draw Graph did not update when the current slip surface changed.
• Bug fix: The default unit weight of water assigned to a tension crack was incorrect when using imperial units.
• Bug fix: It was not possible to add new Lambda Values when the list of Lambda Values for the Linear Search method was empty.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash when viewing results from a GeoStudio 2007 file. (This was a regression introduced in 8.14.0.)
• Bug fix: Creating a single grid point does not create an undo/redo item.
• Bug fix: In some cases for a Monte-Carlo analysis, when Cohesion and Phi are both specified in Set Probabilistic Parameters and a C-Phi correlation coefficient is specified, results may be incorrect.
• Bug fix: In rare scenarios GeoStudio is unable to read results generated by a sensitivity analysis.
• Bug fix: Some shallow slip surfaces may not be generated.
• Bug fix: When editing some of the SLOPE/W lines using the KeyIn commands, the points on the line were not always displayed in sorted order. This bug specifically affected piezometric lines, fully specified slip surfaces, surcharge lines and tension crack lines.
• Bug fix: View Object Information did not display any information about the axis of rotation.
• Bug fix: In Draw Graph in a sensitivity analysis, the Run combo box was not displaying properly when multiple modifiers were being used.

SEEP/W

• Change: The Plan View analysis in SEEP/W ensured that the saturated conductivity of a K-function was used even if the pore-water pressure was negative. Although the restriction is theoretically correct, it prevented an add-in material model from receiving the actual solved pore-water pressure when it was negative. The restriction was removed because the Saturated Only model can be used in place of the Saturated-Unsaturated material model to ensure the saturated conductivity is used in the Plan View analysis.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could potentially crash after a flux section was selected.

SIGMA/W

• Bug fix: In some cases for axisymmetric analyses with a central angle of 360 degrees, the verification error "Neither force nor displacement has been applied in this analysis" would be reported incorrectly.

TEMP/W

• Bug fix: Climate data import did not work. (This was a regression introduced in 8.14.0.)
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could potentially crash after a flux section was selected.

CTRAN/W

• Bug fix: GeoStudio could potentially crash after a flux section was selected.

AIR/W

• Bug fix: GeoStudio could potentially crash after a flux section was selected.

VADOSE/W

• Bug fix: Climate data import did not work. (This was a regression introduced in 8.14.0.)
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could potentially crash after a flux section was selected.

8.15.1.11236

These additional changes were made in version 8.15.1.11236

All Products

• Bug fix: Unable to run license maintenance check while upgrading to 8.15.
• Bug fix: Upgrading from 8.14 to 8.15 loses all non-English languages.

8.15.2.11331

These additional changes were made in version 8.15.2.11331

All Products

• Feature: When typing coordinates in the status bar while in a draw mode, you can now specify a relative point with an angle and an X or Y offset. For example: @x10<30 will move 10 units to the right and up 30 degrees.
• Change: Minor performance and stability improvements.
• Change: Improved meshing reliability.
• Bug fix: Floating regions could not always be selected using Modify Objects. In some cases the domain region below it would be selected instead.
• Bug fix: Merge Regions may not merge two adjacent regions properly.
• Bug fix: In Draw Mesh Properties, the mesh is not updated after clicking “Remove Constraints”. You can force the mesh to update by applying other constraints or modifying the geometry. This bug was a regression introduced in version 8.14.
• Bug fix: In some cases a solver may fail while attempting to reference initial conditions from a steady state analysis, and display an “Invalid time step” error.
• Bug fix: In some cases GeoStudio may crash while editing initial conditions in KeyIn Analyses.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash when clicking "Copy" in View Result Information. This bug was a regression introduced in version 8.15.0.
• Bug fix: In View Result Information, dragging a rectangle could select the wrong gauss points.
• Bug fix: View Result Information is now faster when selecting a large number of nodes.
• Bug fix: Some parts of the software always appeared in English, even if the rest was displayed in a different language. This bug was a regression introduced in version 8.15.0.
• Bug fix: A few issues were fixed related to translations in various languages.
• Bug fix: A DWG or DXF imported as a Sketch Image would hide any other images behind it. This bug was a regression introduced in version 8.15.0.
• Bug fix: File Export incorrectly listed AutoCAD DWG files as an option for exporting. Currently the only AutoCAD file type supported for exporting is DXF.
• Bug fix: In some cases, especially with very small regions, importing regions from DXF may cause GeoStudio to crash.
• Bug fix: When using licenses tied to multiple USB dongles with 64-bit Windows, GeoStudio was only able to detect one of the USB dongles. This bug was a regression introduced in version 8.15.0. With this new release, all USB dongles will be detected by default, but in order to run GeoStudio from a remote desktop you must go to Help - License Management - Local Settings, and check the "Use 64-bit Licensing" checkbox. Due to a constraint in the underlying licensing software, 64 bit licensing will only detect a single USB dongle at a time.

SLOPE/W

• Bug fix: Not all probabilistic graphs could be viewed. This bug was a regression introduced in version 8.15.0.
• Bug fix: Contours were not always updated when changing the time step while in Results View.
• Bug fix: When exiting the Draw Entry and Exit mode by right-clicking, the mouse cursor would not be reset.
• Bug fix: In View Slice Information, using the keyboard's arrow keys after a mouse click was not changing the selected slice. This bug was a regression introduced in version 8.15.0.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio may crash if a SLOPE/W analysis is solved while in the Select Slip Surface mode.
• Bug fix: In some cases the Slip Surfaces window may not display properly the first time GeoStudio is run, or after using Window - Reset Window Layout. Closing and re-running GeoStudio will normally solve the problem.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio may crash when viewing results of a sensitivity analysis. This bug was a regression introduced in version 8.15.0.

SIGMA/W

• Bug fix: In KeyIn Analyses, when getting initial conditions from a parent and that parent is a SIGMA/W Coupled Consolidation analysis, it was not possible to select "(all)" as the time steps.

8.15.3.11339

These additional changes were made in version 8.15.3.11339

All Products

• Bug fix: GeoStudio is unable to use Activated licenses on 64-bit Windows. This bug was a regression introduced in version 8.15.2.

8.15.4.11512

These additional changes were made in version 8.15.4.11512

All Products

Improved application stability working with the geometry in GeoStudio. Problems fixed with this change include:

• Bug fix: GeoStudio may incorrectly display the error message "Unable to use results from file. The mesh is incompatible with this file" when attempting to load results from another analysis, even though the other analysis was solved using the same mesh.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio may crash when modifying region geometry.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio may crash when saving a file.
• Bug fix: In some cases, especially with very small regions, importing regions from DXF may cause GeoStudio to crash.

 

These bugs were also fixed:

• Bug fix: The Student and Basic Editions may incorrectly indicate there are too many regions, and prevent the file from being saved.
• Bug fix: Combo boxes in a toolbar (such as the Contour combo box) may not accurately indicate what is currently selected.
• Bug fix: When an analysis was exported to DXF format, legends in the exported drawing appeared as solid white rectangles.
• Bug fix: Some changes made in Set Units and Scale that affect the mesh (such as changing the Central Angle for an axisymmetric analysis) would not be applied to the mesh until the next time the mesh was regenerated (such as by making a change to the geometry). This bug was a regression introduced in version 8.15.0.
• Bug fix: In File - Import as Regions, in some cases when importing from DWG/DXF an incorrect scale factor was suggested.
• Bug fix: Material assignments on a line were not preserved when the line was split.
• Bug fix: There was a problem with the DWG/DXF importing where in some cases an incorrect scale factor was suggested. This has now been fixed so the suggested scale more accurately represents the contents of the DWG/DXF file.
• Bug fix: Material assignments on a line were not preserved when the line was split.

SLOPE/W

• Bug fix: The Slip Surfaces window may display incorrect left and right angles for the optimized slip surface.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio could crash when switching to Define view while in Select Slip Surface mode.
• Bug fix: Contour labels on the grid of centers (when contouring factor of safety) were not displayed with the user-defined number of significant digits.

SIGMA/W

• Bug fix: The starting time and duration may be incorrect for analyses whose type is "SIGMA/W Stress", "QUAKE/W Stress", or "QUAKE/W Newmark Deformation". This bug was a regression introduced in version 8.15.0.
• Bug fix: GeoStudio crashes when in Results view for a SIGMA/W analysis that has not been solved. This bug was a regression introduced in version 8.14.

QUAKE/W

• Bug fix: The starting time and duration may be incorrect for analyses whose type is "SIGMA/W Stress", "QUAKE/W Stress", or "QUAKE/W Newmark Deformation". This bug was a regression introduced in version 8.15.0.