This file documents the changes made to GeoStudio 2004 since the initial release (version 6.00). The numbers in parentheses after some items refer to a Knowledge Base article with more information. These Knowledge Base articles may be found by visiting the GEO-SLOPE web site at http://www.geo-slope.com.
Please note: This version has not been fully tested and is
not supported by GEO-SLOPE. The changes
listed here may not be included in the final released product. [Last updated May 8, 2008]
· A bug was fixed in the PWP computation due to Ru/Bbar in some odd combinations of piezometric line, the “Add weight flag” and the Ru/Bbar value.
· A bug was fixed which computed an incorrect horizontal stress using the Insitu 2 analysis type with multiple soils having different Poisson ratios.
· A bug was fixed which computed an incorrect horizontal stress using the Initial Static analysis type with multiple soils having different Poisson ratios.
· Important changes have been made to the use of Piezometric lines and hydrostatic forces.
· The computation of hydrostatic forces has been decoupled from the piezometric line. The piezometric line will now only be used to compute the pore-water pressures in the ground. If you are not concerned with pore-water pressures, then you will not need to draw a piezometric line.
· Pressure boundaries will be applied either normal or vertical to the slope as selected by the user. Pressure boundaries will not be able to exert a lateral pressure on a vertical wall. If you wish to use a pressure boundary for a situation where a vertical wall exists and you want the horizontal force to be considered, you will need to hand-compute a hydrostatic force and apply it on the face of the vertical wall explicitly.
· If you want a hydrostatic pressure to be automatically computed, you will need to use a no-strength material. A piezometric line will still be required to obtain the correct pore-water pressure conditions in the soil.
· A bug was fixed that caused the C-Phi correlation in a probabilistic analysis to be ignored.
· A bug was fixed in slip surface optimization that could cause the optimization process to fail without an optimized solution.
·
A bug was fixed which could cause
GeoStudio to crash when working with a file that starts with a dot (e.g.,
“.project.gsz”). (KB695)
· A bug was fixed which could cause the coordinate tooltip to display unexpected characters.
· A bug was fixed which could cause GeoStudio to crash when run on Windows Vista.
· A bug was fixed which could cause GeoStudio to crash if left running for a long time without being used.
· Added a new option “Allow Passive Mode” in KeyIn Analysis Settings to allow the modeling of a slope under passive failure mode.
· Changes were made to the “Combined, S=f(depth)” and “Combined, S=f(datum)” strength models when an anisotropic function is used. In this release the anisotropic modifier is only applied to the undrained strength (Cu), which is more consistent with the original intent of the combined models.
·
Improvements were made to the way a surface
water layer is modeled. By doing so,
modeling a water layer with a no-strength soil region or with a pressure line
will result in identical factors of safety.
The horizontal stabilizing force due to the water layer is computed
based on the piezometric surface in both cases.
The pressure load application direction options (Vertical or
· Better error messages are displayed when air gaps or overhanging slopes are detected, or when elements have a null material.
· A bug was fixed in the Hoek-Brown strength function estimation which tended to slightly underestimate the actual strength of the material.
· A bug was fixed in locating the ground surface line when a “None” soil model is used. The “None” soil model is now ignored in location the ground surface line.
· A bug was fixed that could have caused GeoStudio to crash or to give incorrect results when using K functions with a single point.
· A bug was fixed that prevented GeoStudio from running on versions of Windows prior to Windows 2000. (KB691)
· GeoStudio can now be installed without Administrator Rights.
· A bug was fixed which ignored “-lic:student” on the command line of the solvers. This bug could also mean that if GeoStudio was run in Student mode on a computer that also had a full license, the solvers would always run with the full license.
· A bug was fixed which caused some units to not be displayed in KeyIn Functions and Draw Graph.
· Some functions we ship as example files were incorrect and have been adjusted.
· Improved the slip surface optimization process, especially for cases with automatic tension cracks.
· A bug was fixed in soil dowel reinforcement. Depending on the orientation of the outside and inside points, in some cases the soil dowel reinforcement load was missed.
· A bug was fixed in the optimization process that sometimes generated a vertical slip surface at the last slice.
· A bug was fixed in the shear strength computation of the Shensep soil model if free water is modeled as a pressure boundary.
· The slip surface combo box in the Method toolbar was widened, so it can display slip surface numbers into the 10s of thousands without cutting off the FOS value.
· Sketch text now shows probabilistic values for C & Phi and other values, and includes the C-Phi Correlation Coefficient in the list of common fields for Anisotropic Function materials.
· An incorrect link was fixed in the online help topic KeyIn Slip Surface Axis Point.
· The default FOS value for drawing safety maps is now rounded down rather than using simple rounding.
· A bug was fixed which collapsed 3-cornered radius boxes down to a line.
· Removed Applied Load and Bond Resistance from the Soil Dowel dialog box, because those values are not used by soil dowels.
· A bug was fixed which could prevent sensitivity and probabilistic values from being entered for Ru and Bbar.
· A bug was fixed which caused SIGMA/W’s C and Phi values to overwrite the C and Phi values in SLOPE/W. (KB626)
·
Improved the Insitu2 method in the
estimation of the initial stress state using a two-staged approach. (KB693)
· A bug was fixed which caused SIGMA/W’s C and Phi values to overwrite the C and Phi values in SLOPE/W. (KB626)
· Improved the Insitu Static method in the estimation of the initial stress state using a two-staged approach. (KB693)
· Improved transient solve times by at least 10%.
Please note: Version 6.19 fixes two important bugs introduced in version 6.18 (see the notes under All Products and SLOPE/W below). If you are currently at version 6.18, or at version 6.19 build 1705, we strongly recommend you upgrade to version 6.19 build 1707. Note that two different versions of 6.19 were released. Check Help – About and ensure you have build 1707.
· A bug was fixed that was introduced in version 6.18. For people whose locale settings had a comma as the decimal character (or anything other than a period), GeoStudio would corrupt their data files when saving, and would display incorrect error messages in some cases when entering data. (KB687)
· A bug was fixed that was introduced in version 6.18. In some cases when using results from a SEEP/W analysis in SLOPE/W, and when a pressure line was used to model a water layer, the factor of safety would be too low. (KB684)
· A bug was fixed in fully coupled consolidation problems with seepage review boundaries. The bug caused some head BCs to accumulate at each review step instead of being reset.
· KeyIn Climate Data now allows negative Net Radiation values.
· A minor bug was fixed in the KeyIn Climate Data dialog box which caused the Potential Evaporation value to be hidden the first time you opened the dialog box for a brand new problem.
·
A bug was fixed which prevented users in
certain countries (especially Asian) from using non-Latin characters in
filenames. (KB590)
· Network licensing is more fault-tolerant. A network license server can now be unavailable for a short time while GeoStudio has a license checked out without immediately forcing GeoStudio to shut down.
·
A bug was fixed which caused some default
values to be metric even when the user chose imperial units. (KB664)
· A bug was fixed which could cause GeoStudio to crash when run from a network drive when the local computer has .NET 2.0 installed. (KB677)
· A bug was fixed which prevented online help from working properly when GeoStudio was run from a network drive. (KB679)
· A bug was fixed with dynamic sketch text which could make the Materials tab of the Field Chooser ignore certain material properties. (KB683)
· A bug was fixed which could cause GeoStudio to think a file had changed (and thus prompt you to save it) every time it was opened.
·
A bug was fixed which would cause most of
the toolbars to disappear if you had a file open but were at the Start Page
when you last shut down GeoStudio. (KB559)
· A bug we thought was fixed in version 6.17 was still happening in certain situations. It has now been fixed again. The bug could freeze the entire computer for seconds or even minutes at a time when zoomed way in on a thick dashed line such as a piezometric line or a contour line.
· A bug was fixed which could in rare cases cause GeoStudio to hang for five minutes and then crash if it is run too quickly after rebooting a machine. (KB681)
· A bug was fixed which could potentially cause strange contours to be drawn when the value being contoured varied only slightly.
· A bug was fixed which, when GeoStudio was run on the same computer that was hosting a license server, could indicate on the Start Page that an updated license file was available but could not be downloaded—or could indicate that an updated license file was downloaded—every time GeoStudio was run.
· A bug was fixed which could cause Zoom Objects to leave lots of white space around the model.
· A bug was fixed exporting the “^” character to DXF.
· Improvements were made to the optimization process to avoid over-projection of first and last segments.
· Improvements were made on bedrock controlled slip surfaces.
· Improvements were made in the checking of thin slices using a constant 0.001 unit.
· Improvements were made in the modeling of the surface water layer with a pressure boundary. The pressure load is always applied vertically and the horizontal stabilizing force of the water layer is automatically added to the ends of the sliding mass.
· In Draw Safety Map, the minimum contour level did not have a default value. Now it’s set to the minimum computed factor of safety. Additionally, the default values for the number of levels and the increment size were such that the map would cover the entire range of computed FOS. This has been changed to more helpful values.
· The bond length of a non-critical slip surface will now be displayed if detailed results were saved.
· A small tolerance is now allowed when checking slip surface exit angles so as to minimize invalid slip surfaces simply due to numerical round off.
· A minor change was made to the FOS display on the SOLVE window after solving a probabilistic analysis.
· A probabilistic graph can now be displayed even when a particular method does not give any valid FOS.
· A bug was fixed in the handling of surface water layers next to vertical slopes.
· A bug was fixed in the slice weight calculation when a thin slice is dropped.
· A bug was fixed which could cause GeoStudio to crash when importing a v5 file and converting soil lines to regions.
· A bug was fixed which caused GeoStudio to crash when a “Shear/Normal function” soil model is selected but the strength function is not available.
· Removed the Student License restriction disallowing an initial water table when opening a file.
· A bug was fixed averaging shear and moment on beam nodes.
· Additional parameters are available for graphing, contouring, and in View Node Info or View Element Info in CONTOUR: Peak Acceleration, Velocity, Displacement.
· Modified the Rayleigh damping method to give better results at higher frequencies.
· A bug was fixed which made it impossible to graph a history node if it was the last node in the mesh.
· A bug was fixed computing the maximum acceleration for acceleration vectors, which could make them all appear too long or too short.
· A bug was fixed saving peak values for nodes outside the mesh.
· A bug was fixed which displayed some graphs rotated 90 degrees by default.
· A bug was fixed averaging shear and moment on beam nodes.
· A bug was fixed which displayed the wrong description for Modifier Functions in View Node Info.
· A bug was fixed where the Modifier Function number in the Draw BC dialog box was being initialized incorrectly, so when the dialog box first appeared, the Modifier Function number was set to the same number as the Boundary Function number.
· A bug was fixed with the Student License that prevented reading 2-point diffusion functions.
· Any elapsed time can now be used as a starting step.
· A bug was fixed in root depth calculations, which could result in negative root uptake.
· A bug was fixed in adaptive time stepping when a seepage review loop would reach its maximum iterations. Now, if there is room, the time step will reduce by half and the step will repeat.
· A bug was fixed initializing the Tri or Rect option in the Root Depth dialog box.
·
Automatic License Updates have been
improved. Version 6.14 and up would
alert you when a new license was available.
Version 6.17 will download and install it automatically if it is able. (KB644, KB660)
·
GeoStudio now notices when a USB
key is attached or detached, and updates the list of licensed analyses on the
Start Page accordingly.
·
The Start Page will now indicate an
analysis is unavailable (grayed out) if there is a license for it on the
network but the network option is disabled on the Manage Licenses dialog box.
·
DXF imports have been
improved. You now have the option to let
GeoStudio update your problem extents automatically to match the imported DXF
or not, and you can have the extents updated even if you are importing the DXF
as a background picture rather than as regions.
·
On a Tablet PC configured for right-handed usage, the
coordinate tooltip will display to the left of the mouse cursor so it is not
hidden by the user’s hand.
· A bug was fixed which affected selecting nodes along a line (such as in Draw Boundary Conditions or Draw Graph). In some cases certain nodes would not be selected.
· A bug was fixed which could cause GeoStudio to crash intermittently at startup.
· A bug was fixed in the File Export command. When exporting as a DXF file, color 0 was used instead of color 7.
· GeoStudio should start up much more quickly, especially when using a network license server.
· When a network license cannot be checked out, the error message now includes a list of users currently using the license.
·
A bug was fixed which would, in some
cases, cause CONTOUR to display “solution out of date” when in fact the
solution was not out of date. (KB587)
· A bug was fixed which could cause GeoStudio to crash when using Modify Objects to move one point onto another point, if the mesh between the two points contained boundary conditions.
· A bug was fixed which could cause contour lines to display incorrectly when large areas of the mesh were all the same value.
· Previously if you double-clicked a .gsz file on a CD to open it in GeoStudio, GeoStudio would crash. Now GeoStudio will display a message indicating it cannot open the file. In a future release we will fix this bug properly to actually allow the file to be opened. In the meantime, to open a file that is on a CD, run GeoStudio and choose File Open. To open a file on a hard drive you can double-click it or use File Open, as expected.
· A bug was fixed which could generate strange meshes in certain cases.
· A bug was fixed which would freeze the entire computer for seconds or even minutes at a time when zoomed way in on a thick dashed line such as a piezometric line or a contour line.
· Fixed a problem that could cause temporary system slowdowns for as long as a second or two every few minutes when using a Sentinel hardware key.
· SLOPE/W now has improved handling for error codes (E9xx) that occur when SOLVE cannot compute a factor of safety for a slip surface. Some new error codes have been added, and a few incorrectly assigned error codes have been fixed. In addition, CONTOUR now displays slip surfaces for many of the error conditions, allowing you to see why the error condition may have occurred.
·
When using the KeyIn PWP Ru Coefficient
dialog box, material properties could become corrupted when typing in
a new material number and then pressing the Copy button. This problem did
not occur when selecting a new material with the mouse. The corrupted material
was evidenced most often by a change in the region color. (KB652)
· Verify will now report an error for discontinuous ground surface lines, such as with overhanging cliffs.
· A bug was fixed in the anisotropic modifier for Left to Right problems.
· A bug was fixed in the horizontal seismic force moment arm values written to the .FRC file. This value is never used in CONTOUR.
· Previously Verify would sort all the points, but in cases with vertical line segments this would sometimes result in invalid point order. Points are no longer sorted, but will be reversed if a line is defined in the wrong order.
· A bug was fixed which would cause strange display problems while drawing if a line undercut itself.
· Fixed a few invalid links in the online help.
· Previously the SOLVE window would sometimes display an E9xx error code and other times a “No Solution” message when no valid FOS could be computed. Now it always displays “No Solution”.
· A bug was fixed in the Draw Reinforcement dialog, where the Applied Load was not being updated for dowels. The data was correct, only the display was wrong.
· A bug was fixed in KeyIn Material Properties which would ignore changes if you hit Enter after changing a value instead of clicking Copy with your mouse.
· When drawing the slip surface grid, you must click the corners of the grid in a particular order. Previously if you clicked them in the wrong order the grid would look strange. Now you’ll get a message explaining the order required.
· A bug was fixed in Draw Reinforcement Loads which could incorrectly display the error message “Bond Length cannot exceed Total Length.”
· Corrected the units displayed in the graph for Modifier Functions.
· Fixed an issue with the File Export command. When exporting as a DXF file, boundary conditions were not getting exported if nodes were turned off.
· A bug was fixed in CONTOUR which would cause it to zoom way out for problems created at very high (or very far negative) x or y values with flux sections but no flux labels.
· Corrected the units for Moment of Inertia in the Structural Beam properties.
· A bug was fixed which used constant stiffness instead of the stiffness function if both were specified.
· A bug was fixed related to modifying the duration in earthquake records.
· The Draw Graph commmand now plots the G Modulus rather than the E Modulus.
· Draw Spectral Response no longer shows circular frequency; the frequency is now 1/time, which matches the graph title.
· Corrected the units for Moment of Inertia in the Structural Beam properties.
· A bug was fixed in CONTOUR which would cause it to zoom way out for problems created at very high (or very far negative) x or y values with flux sections but no flux labels.
· A bug was fixed in CONTOUR which would cause it to zoom way out for problems created at very high (or very far negative) x or y values with flux sections but no flux labels.
· Modified how actual transpiration is applied at the top two nodes. Now it is less sensitive to a cover with only a few nodes. In the past if the user did not use lots of nodes, depending on their root depth, there may not have been balance between potential uptake and actual uptake of root water.
·
Bug fix to oxygen diffusion coefficient
calculation. Previous results would have
used a diffusion coefficient that was too low by a value equal to the actual
value multiplied by the air content. (KB659)
· A bug was fixed in CONTOUR which would cause it to zoom way out for problems created at very high (or very far negative) x or y values with flux sections but no flux labels.
· A bug was fixed where the mesh was not regenerated when changing the number of elements on a surface layer.
· A bug was fixed which could cause an incorrect factor of safety to be computed when using line loads under certain specific circumstances.
· A bug was fixed which could give slightly different Factors of Safety when using the GLE method, depending on the order that lambda values were entered.
· GeoStudio will now notify you on the Start Page if a new license file is available. (KB644)
· Tools Verify will now generate an error for axisymmetric analyses when nodes have negative x values.
· A bug was fixed in Modify Objects which caused regions, once selected, to always appear in a selected state.
· When Modify Objects is used to change a region containing a tunnel mesh pattern, the tunnel center is now updated correctly. (KB642)
· A bug was fixed which could cause GeoStudio to crash when opening a SLOPE/W problem that uses QUAKE/W dynamic stresses in certain situations. (KB643)
· A bug was fixed which would incorrectly re-order points in a Piezometric Line with vertical segments.
· A bug was fixed in the slice weight calculation in cases with tail water. A smaller FOS may be obtained when the problem has a high datum, tail water and a high seismic coefficient.
· A bug was fixed in the consideration of Ua when Phi-b is non-zero.
· A bug was fixed in checking the validity of Entry/Exit slip surfaces.
· Logic was improved in checking for minimum slice thickness to avoid processing very thin slices.
· A bug was fixed which prevented a unit flux boundary condition from being applied on a plan view analysis.
· A bug was fixed that caused truss forces to be ignored in a Stop-Restart analysis.
· A bug was fixed which could cause CONTOUR to crash when plotting a Sum vs Average in certain cases.
· When using a network license server, GeoStudio now starts up more quickly.
· A bug was fixed which would cause GeoStudio to crash in Draw Element Properties after importing a file created with a version 5 product. (KB632)
· A bug was fixed which caused GeoStudio to crash when printing to a file. (KB629)
· A bug was fixed in CONTOUR which could cause graphs to display a straight line when all its values were close to zero. (KB628)
· A bug was fixed which could cause invalid target and ratio values to be assigned to region lines when a point is added to an existing line. (KB639)
· A bug was fixed which could cause GeoStudio to crash on startup on a Tablet PC. (KB641)
· A bug was fixed which caused the material description and color to be reset when changing the material model.
· A bug was fixed which could cause GeoStudio to crash when using the Insert Point option in the Draw Tension Crack Line dialog box. (KB636)
· A bug was fixed which could cause GeoStudio to crash when drawing piezometric lines with more than 100 points.
· A bug was fixed which would cause SLOPE/W CONTOUR to crash when opening a file with a block-specified slip surface with only one point for each block. (KB630)
· A bug was fixed which could cause SLOPE/W to crash when exporting a DXF. (KB631)
· A bug was fixed which could cause GeoStudio to crash when generating flow paths in SEEP/W CONTOUR under particular circumstances.
· A bug was fixed in the Draw Function dialog box which could prevent you from adding points to a function after deleting some.
· A bug was fixed in calculations related to q flux on surface regions.
· A bug was fixed which could cause SEEP/W to crash when using Consolidation with a Water Content Function with no data points, only Mv.
· A bug was fixed which caused memory to not be released when solving a consolidation analysis and in certain other cases, potentially using up all available memory. (KB635)
· A bug was fixed which caused SIGMA/W SOLVE to crash when using excavation elements in an uncoupled consolidation. (KB633)
· Coupled and uncoupled consolidation now support truss elements. (KB640)
· A bug was fixed which caused memory to not be released when solving a consolidation analysis and in certain other cases, potentially using up all available memory. (KB635)
· Improved spectral response simulation method.
· A bug was fixed using stiffness as a function.
· A bug was fixed which caused GeoStudio to shut down unexpectedly when choosing KeyIn Analysis Settings in QUAKE/W on Windows 2000. (KB637)
· A bug was fixed in Draw Spectral Analysis and Draw Node History Plot, where changing certain parameters would not affect the plot.
· A bug was fixed that forced you to have a SEEP/W license to open a CTRAN/W analysis.
· A bug was fixed in the calculation of surface region interlayer flux.
· A bug was fixed which caused memory to not be released when solving a consolidation analysis and in certain other cases, potentially using up all available memory. (KB635)
· A bug was fixed which would cause GeoStudio to crash if you chose KeyIn Regions when no regions existed. (KB620)
· A bug was fixed which could cause GeoStudio to crash under certain circumstances when using Undo while a dialog box was open. (KB623)
· A bug was fixed which would cause GeoStudio to crash when inserting a field in Sketch Text for a missing value. (KB621)
· A bug was fixed which would cause GeoStudio to crash opening a file that was saved with a fully specified slip surface line with no points. (KB622)
· SLOPE/W no longer imposes a limit to the number of slices on a slip surface.
· A bug was fixed in the Fredlund-Xing function estimation which would give higher K values at higher suctions when using a VWC function saved in Log Suction view.
· A bug was fixed which would occasionally cause SIGMA/W SOLVE to crash while writing initial conditions in a load deformation analysis.
· A change was made to how the oxygen diffusion coefficient is computed in partially frozen ground. The ice content is considered part of the soil solids and the porosity is modified.
· Previously some license preferences were stored in a user-specific section of the Registry, which meant these settings were lost if the computer was re-imaged, as some university labs do. Now the settings are retained across re-imaging. (KB615)
· A bug was fixed which could cause a crash using KeyIn Points. (KB618)
· A bug was fixed which could cause GeoStudio to crash if the system it was running on was set up with a profile that disallowed saving recent document histories. (KB606)
· A bug was fixed which could cause GeoStudio to crash when displaying region properties after editing the region’s points. (KB607)
· A bug was fixed which caused the wrong FOS contours to be displayed if you changed the method using the toolbar. (KB614)
· A bug was fixed which underlined too many FOS values for analyses with multiple slip surfaces displayed. (KB616)
· A bug was fixed which could cause the Safety Map to not be displayed. (KB617)
· A label on the Volumetric Water Content Function in SEEP/W was changed to m3/m3 instead of m/sec. (KB612)
· A bug was fixed in K function estimation when a Volumetric Water Content data point was at zero. (KB10)
· A bug was fixed which caused the solver to use the wrong Phi-b values in some cases. (KB608)
· QUAKE/W now enforces the rule that dynamic analyses cannot use external PWP data as input. (KB613)
· A bug was fixed which prevented CTRAN/W from opening 2-point diffusion functions.
· A bug was fixed which caused snow melting to occur early. (KB609)
· A bug was fixed in K function estimation when a Volumetric Water Content data point was at zero. (KB610)
·
Sketch Text Improvements:
· The Material List button has been replaced with a Materials Tab like in SLOPE/W version 5. This allows you to display a list of material properties defined for the current analysis (in all products, not just SLOPE/W). While it was previously possible to create this list by inserting each field manually into the list, the Materials tab makes it much quicker. You can still insert any field as dynamic text using the Advanced tab.
· The Sketch Text command now supports international (Unicode) characters when running under Windows 2000 or XP. This allows you to label your drawings using languages that have non-Latin alphabets, such as Chinese, Korean, Arabic, or Hebrew. (KB584)
· </