General Changes:
REV 5.04 is difficult to describe. With regard to the basic operation of our software, not much has changed. On the periphery, however, little is the same. Two of our long term goals are at the root of the differences: a common release for all operating environments, and better support for our clients. As for better support, we now have a WEB site. Yes, we have the normal advertising there, but more importantly, we will post the most current version of our software. Also, we keep a current list of all fixes in the software for this release. Thus, if you are having a problem, you can have an immediate fix, provided you have INTERNET access.
In keeping with the INTERNET theme, we have completely changed the way you now use the tools we provide. Our entire WEB site is now part of the release, and you can browse it (with a browser we provide) locally. A major part of this is information on how to use the software, documentation, and the various models we supply. In the past, you had to issue "cd /ultra/data/tools/vessels/barges" and then "dir" to see what barges were in the barge file. Now, you simply say "look" click on tools samples and help, and follow the instructions. Manuals are now available and ready for printing, and many things that were not documented now have browsable documentation.
With this release, the default release medium is a CDROM. For our PC users, this allows us to ship all of this new information without you having to spend a lifetime reading and changing diskettes. Also, for the first time, one can now freely mix PCs and unix workstations in a TCP/IP network, and (hopefully) we will have a version which runs under WINDOWS/NT.
Since we are now using a command set of tools, samples, etc. for
both the PCs and UNIX, we have changed the suffixes of all of the
files so that they are now only 3 characters long. In other words,
the comi file is now a com file, etc. In UNIX, you can still use the
old scheme without problems. The only thing that will change is that
the output files PPOUT and OCOMO now will be PPO and OCO.
What No Longer Works:
The option -TENSTR option is no longer available for the
&MODEL_DEF command. We found problems with this because people
would change the yield and not the tensile strength. Now, the
default value of tensile strength is 1.66 times the yield.
There are now default SCF factors for beams which can be set
with &MODEL_DEF and/or the ~CLASS definition.
What Answers Will Change:
The only change made which should influence the results
deal with code check of non tubular members. The AISC/API
beam check module has been completely rewritten and several
minor bugs have been corrected. The option
-CODE can now have two flags following the name of the
code which control an interpretation of the AISC code for
computing the bending allowable.
New Reports:
As mentioned above, the changes to our software itself are minor. The most useful are several new "SUMMARIES". The old JOINT_SUM POINT and COORDINATES has been replaced with POINT_SUM POINT and COORDINATE and the JOINT_SUM command now have the new type PROPERTIES which produces a nice summary of the geometry and material properties of a joint. The BEAM_SUM command has three new types CLEARANCE, SCF, END and TUBE. The first of these reports the true distance between a beam and any other non-connected beam. The SCF type reports the SCFs for non tubular members, the END type reports the part coordinates of the ends of beams, and the TUBE type reports the OD, T, etc of a tubular beam.
The two commands: MATRICES and EXFORCE in the FREQ_RESP Menu now accept the option -FILE. If this option is used, then the matrices and/or forces will also be written to the PPO file. The data in the PPO file is written so that it can be used by other programs. In particular, the full 6x6 matrices are written.
Two reports dealing with connectors have changed. First, the report one gets with the TABLE command now has an extra column which reports the critical breaking strength. Also, &STATUS CL_FLEX no longer has the spring at the end information, but includes the breaking strength for each segment.
The last two report changes are a new type, NT_FATIGUE, for the
BEAM_POST command and a new spectra type 2JONSWAP. The NT_FATIGUE
type computes beam fatigue on non tubular beams. The 2JONSWAP
spectrum is a two parameter spectrum where the gamma parameter
varies with wave steepness.
Compartments:
Several minor changes have been made with respect to compartments. In the past, there was no easy way to change the type of flooding without changing the ballast in the tanks. This has been fixed. Now, one can specify
&COMPARTMENT -SLOSH :CSEL
the change all tanks selected by :CSEL to be "sloshed". In
addition to -SLOSH and -SIMPLE, a new type, -FROZEN, has
been added. This type is similar to -SIMPLE, but no free
surface correction is included. A new option on
&PARAMETER,
-FILL_TYPE defines the default type of filling. In the past,
-SIMPLE was the default, now one can specify his own.
The &STATUS COMPARTMENT
has been changed. It now gives the type of filling,
specific gravity of the contents, the minimum, maximum and
current percent full, and the maximum and current amount of
ballast. Finally, the report received with TANK_FLOOD has
two new columns - the amount of ballast and the change in
ballast divided by the change in event.
Converters:
The &CONVERT command has been improved and the DAMS models can
now be converted. Most of the changes have to do with "factoring"
loads. You can now define factors for each load case as people
do with other programs. Finally, SACS GRPOV commands are now
translated.