Rev 12.2 is a minor release for our newer software. The primary changes in this release have to do with the &PLTMODEL command and the ILLUSTRATION Menu. Several options have been added to the &PLTMODEL command so that one can now select parts of the model for picture plotting. The major differences really show up when one enters the Illustration Menu. Here, almost everything has changed. The commands WINDOW and NAMES no longer exist, and many options have been added to the PICTURE command.

The selection process is now controlled by five options on the PICTURE command: -NAME, -BODY, -PART, -CATEGORY, and -ENDS. To be selected for processing, an element must be selected by all five options. This gives much better control over the extent of the picture. Also, a new option -PLANE has been added where one can specify the names of three nodes and then the picture will consist of only those strings which lie in the specified plane.

The manner in which names are plotted has been improved. Now, for entities which have many strings with the same name such as compartments, the name will only be plotted once at the centroid of the ends. This means that one can now ask names to be plotted on a vessel plot and receive something of value.

The manner in which windowing is done in the Illustration Menu has been changed. In the past, the scaling philosophy was to scale the picture so that the entire picture filled the plot. This leads to some confusion when the WINDOW command is used. In particular, one can window one dimension and have the picture appear practically unchanged if the other dimensions govern the scale. To remove this confusion, a new option -ALL_FILL has been added to the &DEVICE command. If this option is used with YES, then the scaling is done as before. Conversely, if NO is used, then the scale factor will be set based on the largest scale instead of the smallest. This results in getting a picture (most of the time) which is governed by any user defined window.

In spite of the changes discussed above, the most important change in the Illustration Menu are the two options -COLOR and -DEFLECT. These allow one to graphically represent the results of structural post-processing in color. This is accomplished by adding data to the database for the maximum unity ratios for punching shear and member checks, the maximum axial load in beams, and the last deflection of a node whenever one issues BEAM, PUNCH, DISPLACE, or CODECK commands. The two options on the PICTURE command use the structural results to map the colors of the beams and nodes, and the location of the ends of members.

A new option, CROSS, has been added to the string function &NUMBER.

Several changes have been made in the STATIC_PROCESS menu. In the past, one could either specify -NUMBER or -STEN and -SHEIGTH on a lift command, but not all of them simultaneously. One can now do so, and in addition, a new option -SHOOK has been added. This new option allows one to stop lifting when a specified hook height has been reached.

The &STATUS B_W command has been changed so that if -BRIEF is specified, the compartments will still be listed separately. Also, a new type of status, DG_CONNECTOR, has been added. This status will report the detailed geometry of a connector. The primary purpose of this command is to report the coordinates of a mooring line along its length.

The program CONNIE has been discontinued. Instead, an internal menu, &CONVERT is now a part of all of the software. Also, programs will now attempt to read a file ultra.shp from the installation directory during program installation so that one can permanently add shapes to the shape table.

A new option, -BLENG has been added to &DEFAULT and the element definition commands so that one can now specify the buckling lengths of an element in addition to the K factors.

One can now specify beams as being cones, and the program will automatically divide the beam into a specified number of prismatic segments. Also, there is a new option, -TENSTR, on both the &DEFAULT and class definition command which can be used to specify the tensile strength of a class. This number is now used in the punching shear check to conform to RP2A. The default is set to a large number so that unless one changes the default, the results will be the same as before.