I was going to hold off on this release until a couple bigger pending changes were finished — but there are a handful of fixes for problems that people are running into. I thought about doing a 3.45.5 release with just fixes, but there are also a few features that should go into a .0. So here we are.
Most of these fixes do not apply to the 3.44 series, so I’m going to stop supporting the parallel branches, moving forward with just 3.46 from now on.
Routing Geom’s can now have rounded corners of specified radius at each junction. You can also now specify the mass/length of Routing Geoms. That linear density is used for both a live-updating mass calculation as well as by the detailed mass properties calculation that will calculate the CG and inertia contributions of the Routing Geom.
The classical lamination theory calculations used in the FEA Structures tool have been updated to calculate the through-laminate engineering constants. Hopefully this improves compatibility with several solvers.
Several simplified tire representation modes have been added. These include a simplified TRA mode that skips the flange calculations as well as some Balloon tire modes. The TRA flange calculations are scale dependent and will not produce reasonable results for tires outside the expected size range. The simplified modes provide alternatives in particular for small scale aircraft like UAV’s.
Some Auxiliary Geom’s have specific requirements for what type of parent Geom they need to function. These requirements are opaque to new users. The Auxiliary Geom GUI has been modified to include a short note describing the requirements for each Aux Geom type.
There have been some struggles with meshing control surfaces to send to VSPAERO. This release has two changes to help with the situation. First, only subsurfaces corresponding to active control surfaces will be impressed on the mesh being prepared for VSPAERO. This means that if you aren’t actively using a control surface, it can’t cause problems. Second, I’ve made a change to the subsurface mesh intersection algorithm. This change appears to help — and doesn’t appear to cause any problems, but keep an eye out for issues with subsurfaces and CompGeom type operations.
There was a problem identifying Kutta wake edges for VSPAERO where the wake would continue up the side of the intersection with another body. The geometry preview option for VSPAERO was not working with the thick set. Some degenerate faces created in the CreateNGonMeshGeom process have been cleaned up. The VSPAERO Clo2D parameter had a misleading description.
The FitAFCST API call had a bug that kept it from ever working. This bug dates to 2015. Sometimes I wonder if anybody uses this stuff — in this case, the answer is No.
Slider GUI elements were not disabled when expected, this made it possible to sometimes change Parms that shouldn’t be changed. Attachment GUI elements were not disabled at the right time. The Vehicle Notes screen had a toggle that did not display properly the first time.
Thomas N. reported a crash that he found during repeated operations with Python scripting. However, it probably could have hit anyone opening a file, or possibly even more frequently than that.
Lots of good stuff here. Everyone should update.
Features:
- Routing Geom gets rounded corners
- Simple and detailed mass properties calculations for Routing Geom
- 3D Lamination theory
- More tire representation modes – including Balloon tires
- Add some notes about geometry requirements for Auxiliary Geoms
- Only intersect active control surfaces for VSPAERO
Bug Fixes:
- Make VSPAERO control surfaces tolerate spaces in names
- Fix TE wake detection for VSPAERO
- Potential fix for control surface subsurface meshing problems
- Fix VSPAERO preview for thick geometry
- Remove Degen Faces in CreateNGonMeshGeom
- Fix FitAfCST API call
- Improve Clo2D Parm description
- Fix deactivation of sliders
- Fix deactivation of attachment GUI elements
- Fix update of toggle button for vehicle notes screen
- Fix intermittent crash reported by Thomas N.