• General Changes
• Pictures
• Results Files and Channels
• What No Longer Works
• What Answers Will Change

General Changes:

• One can now specify a thickness with #TUBE and the options -TOT_WEIGHT and -MULT_WEIGHT. Thus these load attributes can contribute weight. Click Here to see the documentation.
• Two new values -MAX_PERCENT and -MAX_AMOUNT have been added to the &COMPARTMENT string function. Click Here to see the documentation.
• One can now "add" a righting arm to that computed from hydrostatics. Also both the righting arm and the "extra" wind arm can now be defined with a cubic instead of a quadratic. Click Here to see the documentation.
• The way CONE sections are treated has changed. One can now use a cone for the missing segment so long as you do not refine it. Also, the thichkess of the cone is now an equivalent thickness which attempts to preserve weight. Click Here to see the documentation.
• The options: -SECONDARY, -QUERY, -CECHO, -CLR_SCR, -COMO, and -MENCMD for &DEVICE now produce a warning that they are ignored.
• The &CHOSE, &INCLUDE, &EXCLUDE, and &ENDBLOCK commands have been removed from the documentation.
• A new option, -COLUMN, has been added to the ADD_COLUMN command in the Disposition Menu. Click Here to see the documentation.
• A new string functions, &PROCESS has been created to return information about the current process. Click Here to see the documentation.
• The string functions &FILE_EXISTS, &UNINAME and &SEVERITY have been removed from the documentation and new actions have been added to &INFO to provide the same service. Also a new type, CHA_FILE, has been added to report the file currently associated with a specified channel. Click Here to see the documentation.

Pictures:

• You can now view a true animation of a time domain (or static) process. Now, whenever you show a picture, you get a control panel which controls which events you can view. Click Here to see the documentation. One important difference here is that in the past, the default a picture was of the current configuration. Now, it is of event 0. Interactively, one must set the event with the slider, or use the option -event xx xx to get event xx.
• One can now write an animation to a file and create a movie of the animation. Click Here to see the documentation. The MPG format used here is MPG4. Some versions of Windows Media Player may not have a plugin to play this format. If you cannot view a movie, download and install this file and then Windows Media Player fill show the movie.
• TUBTANKS are now included in compartment pictures.
• One can now specialize pictures based on category in addition to body, part, etc. Click Here to see the documentation.
• The string function &PI_VIEW has been removed from the documentation. To get a list of user defined views, one now uses &NAMES PI_VIEWS.

Results Files:

The "GRAPHICS SAVE" channel has been eliminated. Thus, You will now reveive a warning when you issue &DEVICE -SECONDARY. Also, the -PRIMARY option has been changed to -G_DEFAULT. Click Here to see the documentation.

Several new physical devices have been added so that you can now save graphics as JPG or PNG files. As a result, one now save graphics into a single file (for most physical devices) or as files containing a single image. The &CHANNEL command has been changed to accomodate these new features. Click Here to see the documentation.

What No Longer Works:

• The logical device and channel names of R_SCREEN, G_SCREEN, G_DEVICE, and G_SAVE are no longer valid. The last of these has simply been eliminated while the first two are now named SCREEN and G_DEVICE has been changed to GRA_DEV.
• The change in pictures discussed above will break many files that show the "current configuration". See for a discussion.
• The -DETAIL option for fatigue of beams, plates, and joints is now ignored. This is because we cannot produce "detail fatigue" for time domain fatigue.

What Answers Will Change:

• The weight of CONE sections will change slightly.
• All of the vessels in the vessel library have been changed. In particular, they all now check a variables V_CUR ans V_WIND. Click Here to see the documentation. In the past most vessels had no wind or current, so most results will not change. Some models, however, did have them so results using these model will have no wind or drag force.