GeoStudio 2012, May 2014 Release

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errors will continue to be updated any time a file is opened or saved; however, testing whether the solution is "out-of-date" can take a long time, so this now only occurs when you click the Refresh button.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.