The SACS development team is pleased to announce the release of SACS 2024 (24.00.02).

SACS 2024 (24.00.02) Release Highlights

Span labeling and auto-incrementation

Display span ID labeling on members and auto-increment span IDs when assigning them for rapid definition of span elements.

Direction Loading for Enclosed Zones

Added a directional load for enclosed zone loading. Members that are not aligned with the selected local coordinate system of the enclosed zone will be automatically assigned as virtual members and excluded from the tributary area calculations and load distribution.

New dense Cholesky solver

Added a new dense Cholesky solver option for improved accuracy with near-indeterminant systems (Solve, Dynpac, PSI). Enhanced single-value decomposition solver to generate triangularization data necessary for some analysis workflows (PSI, Dynpac, Collapse). Also improved error handling to attempt an alternative fallback solver in the event of errors/non-convergence.

List of Enhancements

Dynamic Super Element

• 1336818 - Improved gravity force vector calculation to consider the expanded mass matrix of the structure instead of the reduced mass matrix used for mode shape extraction.

Precede

• 1321091 - Added Span ID to member labeling options and view visibility options. Enhanced the Span dialog to auto-increment the Span ID to improve usability for span assignment.
• 1498143 - Added keyboard tooltips to Precede. Press ‘ALT’ on the keyboard to reveal tooltips with keyboard shortcut indicators.

Seastate

• 1496276 - Added a directional load for enclosed zone loading. Members that are not aligned with the selected local coordinate system of the enclosed zone will be automatically assigned as virtual members and excluded from the tributary area calculations and load distribution.

Solve

• 1502219 - Added a new dense Cholesky solver option for improved accuracy with near-indeterminant systems (Solve, Dynpac, PSI). Enhanced single-value decomposition solver to generate triangularization data necessary for some analysis workflows (PSI, Dynpac, Collapse). Also improved error handling to attempt an alternative fallback solver in the event of errors/non-convergence.

List of Fixed Defects

Collapse

• 1492665 - Added better error handling for unsupported concrete slabs in Collapse analyses.

Collapse Advanced

• 1304075 - Fixed an issue with Collapse Advanced base shear reporting where incorrect values were reported when mixed boundary conditions (fixity, pilehead, spring) were used.
• 1398599 - Fixed an issue where Collapse Advanced could not properly process non-symmetric soil curves with zero stiffness layers.
• 1468205 - Fixed an issue where the local coordinate system in Collapse Advanced did not match the local coordinate system in SACS pre-processor leading to incorrect internal forces with near vertical members due to a stricter tolerance (sin(theta) < 1.0e-9). Collapse Advanced now uses the same criterion for identifying vertical members (sin(theta) < 0.001).

Documentation

• 1011721 - Added clarification to the hydrodynamic options in Dynpac Dynamic Modal Extraction (DYNOPT) line documentation.
• 1012142 - Fixed Floatation Plot Request (PLTRQ) line documentation errors.
• 1492329 - Fixed an issue with Seastate API 2MET Option (LDAPI) line documentation.

Fatigue

• 1011833 - Updated DNV T SN curve to use 25 mm reference thickness for thickness correction factor with non-tubular connections. 32 mm will still be used for tubular connections and plate elements.

GH Bladed Interface

• 1011733 - Added error handling for GH Bladed process when the number of load conditions exceeds the limit of 36 thousand load cases.

Installation

• 1513753 - Fixed an issue with missing DLLs required for building FAST for modular non-integrated wind turbine analyses.

Precede

• 1519144 - Fixed an issue where rendered member edge coloring did not match custom group coloring. Also added an enhancement to shift edge coloring to heighten contrast with the selected member color.
• 1525816 - Fixed an issue where Collapse View could crash when opening collapse restart files with a FORTRAN rewind error code.
• 1541346 - Fixed an issue where Precede could crash when creating skid loads.

PSI

• 1544855 - Fixed an issue where the reduced stiffness matrix was calculated incorrectly when the number of piles is large.

Seastate

• 1500094 - Fixed an issue with table of contents page references.
• 1505086 - Fixed an issue with parsing enclosed zone load pressures.

Solve

• 1531967 - Improved error handling in solve for analyses without load conditions.

Superelement

• 1481132 - Fixed an issue with scaling input values when a floating-point input is expected, but an integer is entered. If users input integer values for real input fields (floating point fields), SACS Superelement would cast those integers to floats with an assumed decimal point. 

Wave Response

• 1009371 - Fixed an issue where wave response load condition IDs were written to the wrong fields when a large number of load conditions were created.