Visual SIMMOD Changes

November 9, 2005 Reporter - Added several flow reports. These reports detail the demand placed on airports and their runways as well as the actual flows which occurred. The difference between the demands and the flows are also computed providing a quick and easy manner to identify times of day when demand exceeds capacity. Animator 2D - Added the ability to specify how many horizontal text tags are displayed for multiple aircraft holding at a particular location. With appropriate usage of this capability screen clutter can be significantly reduced. Animator 2D - Enabled display of gate turnarounds in a separate color when colors mode is set to "Color by Arr/Dep/Over/Intra". Animator 2D - When processing new SIMMOD results the Animator2D now writes a SIMU26_enhanced.txt file which makes locating data with the SIMU26 file very simple. Additionally, several extra pieces of information is written to the file such as node and link identifiers. Visual SIMMOD - Enabled the Vector Areas Editor. Use this tool to easily create and edit vectoring areas for usage with the Animator 2D. Visual SIMMOD - Enhanced the writing of procedures data to the SIMU03 file. More detailed information may found in the flatfile documentation of the PROCEDURES card. Previously, when procedure time or distance separation data was missing Visual SIMMOD automatically inserted zeros to prevent program errors. Now, if missing data is encountered, one of three methodology's is chosen to write the data, depending on the user's choice. The methods are as follows: Fill with zeros - Write in the same manner as before, fill with zeros. Fill with default values - If missing data is encountered, fill with default values found in DEFAULT_DATA table. Leave empty - If missing data is encountered, leave the entire row of times or distances empty.

October 10, 2005 Animator 2D - Enabled the ability to have aircraft fly a vectored path. Animator 2D - Enabled the ability to have aircraft fly a holding stack. Visual SIMMOD - Enabled support for the new FAA SIMMOD engine capability concerning Holding Aprons. Visual SIMMOD - Enabled support for the new airfield link restriction available in the FAA SIMMOD engine. The new capability allows the user to define which airlines (and optionally models) may not taxi upon a particular link.

August 26, 2005 Animator 2D - Enabled the GIF snapshot capability.

August 16, 2005 Visual SIMMOD - Enhanced table import functionality so that it properly reads CSV and TXT files which have previously exported with the column titles included. Visual SIMMOD - Enhanced table import functionality so that it warns the user that data is about to be appended to a table which already has data within it. Visual SIMMOD - Fixed a bug in the toflatfile routines that caused the LINKBLOCKING card to be written incorrectly if either a blocking or blocked set of aircraft models was omitted. Previously the routines required both blocked and blocking sets of aircraft models to be specified before the routines would write the data properly.

August 4, 2005 Visual SIMMOD - Improved the DXF to QGF conversion routines. AutoCAD DXF "blocks" are now retained by Visual SIMMOD in the corresponding QGF file. This is a major enhancement allowing for larger DXF files to be converted into QGF files. Negatively, full screen refreshes will take longer. Since a majority of users problems have centered around properly exploding blocks and the subsequent size of their converted QGF files this enahancement should prove quite useful. Visual SIMMOD - Improved the DXF to QGF conversion routines to retain DXF arc entities as simple one line entries in the QGF file. Previously arcs were exploded into multi-faceted polylines which created substantially larger QGF files. This enhancement thus reduces the size (thus reducing memory requirements) of QGF files. It does cause reduced screen refresh performance due to the need to explode the arcs internally to the program. Visual SIMMOD - Fixed bug in export tables to OpenOffice format where if an item printed to the spreadsheet cell contained an ampersand the spreadsheet would not properly load in OpenOffice (i.e. the spreadsheet file was corrupted). Visual SIMMOD - Fixed a bug in moving nodes. If the user had previously moved a node (first node) and then attempted to move a second node, but missed the second node (didn't properly grab the node), the first node would be moved instead.

July 24, 2005 Animator 2D - Enhanced presentation mode such that departing aircraft immediately turn off the runway to their second airspace node upon liftoff. Visual SIMMOD - Added compile time data to the "About" menu. Visual SIMMOD - Minor correction to the DXF to QGF Improved documentation.

July 6, 2005 Visual SIMMOD - Added Runway Exits Editor to the system. Allows users to easily define allowed and prohibited runway exits based upon runway, aircraft model, and gate criteria. Visual SIMMOD & Animator 2D - Added Application Notes tool to allow users to save notes describing the application for future reference. Visual SIMMOD - Added Taxipath Optimization Limits editor which allows JSIMMOD users to limit the links which are searched by the taxipath optimization routines, therefore greatly speeding simulation runtimes. Visual SIMMOD - Enabled the ability to double-click an airspace link to edit link specific values. Once the edit tool is displayed it is only necessary to single click any additional links. The single click technique once the link editor is visible has been enabled for airfield links as well. JSIMMOD - Enhanced JSIMMOD to have the ability to execute Aeroscript script files. The Aeroscript capability is a full featured aviation scripting language which allows the user to easily query the JSIMMOD engine concerning the current simulation state and to make decisions based upon the answers. Visual SIMMOD - Added tables to the Visual SIMMOD system to support new JSIMMOD features. Visual SIMMOD - Fixed a bug in Visual SIMMOD such that if the projection in the editor was INM users were unable to select links. Visual SIMMOD - Fixed a bug in the generic table editor which allowed blank or null data to be entered into character based key fields. Visual SIMMOD - Fixed a bug in the upgrade database routines such that when SIM_NUMs were added to wide variety of tables blank values were not permitted in those fields in certain instances. The SIM_NUM fields should now readily accept null or blank values. Visual SIMMOD - Fixed a bug in the QGF Editor such that a layer's visibility was not being properly saved to the QGF properly. Documentation - Updated QGF Reference Guide. In the Animator or Editor help system simply search for QGF and this vastly improved guide to the QGF format will be referenced. DXF to QGF - Fixed a small bug which prevented a particular type of polyline (one of about twenty) from being read properly. DXF to QGF - Fixed a small bug which caused DXF solids to have markers turned on when converted to QGF polygons. The bug caused small circles (undesirable markers) to appear at the intersections of lines comprising polygons converted from DXF solids.

June 6, 2005 DXF to QGF - Conversion enhancement.  INM 6.x exports a DXF file of it's graphics window.  Unfortunately it fails to provide Z dimension information.  This caused the DXF to QGF conversion routines to fail.  The enhancement provided allows Visual SIMMOD's components to more properly read the INM created DXF files. Visual SIMMOD - The routines which export the database to SIMU## files has been updated to write the Gate - Plan - Runway - Staging Area information in plan sorted order. Visual SIMMOD - Enhanced the import routines to read METERING data which has comments embedded within each METERING card record. Visual SIMMOD - Enhanced the import routines to read coordinates data (in airspace nodes for example) which is formatted using the FAA's "##:##.######" format. Visual SIMMOD - Fixed bug in the export from database to SIMU## files which caused the SECTORS data to be written incorrected in some cases. Animator 2D - Fixed bugs causing turnarounds to travel the wrong direction when either parked at the gate or when pulling away from the gate.

April 15, 2005 Visual SIMMOD - Merge nodes/links enhancement New tool allows multiple links to be merged simultaneously onto a single node. Tool checks for duplicates errors and appropriately renames links when applicable.

April 12, 2005 Visual SIMMOD - Import/Export SIMMOD Enhancement Enhancement now permits Visual SIMMOD to import several SIMMOD cards which may in some instances referred to in the plural context. Such as TAXIPATHS, which is technically incorrrect per the documentation, versus the correct TAXIPATH. Visual SIMMOD - Import SIMMOD bug fix Fixed a bug where a SIMU09 card line is malformed (possibly from really old SIMMOD 1.2 files) and possibly doesn't have an ending asterick. Note: We believe this bug is fixed but we cannot that since we have not been able to obtain an example of the problem itself. The problem has only been reported to us.

April 8, 2005 Visual SIMMOD - Link/node number display enhancement Enhanced Visual SIMMOD to now display SIMMOD link/node numbers on the map graphics. This enhancement also applies to gates numbers. Visual SIMMOD - Gate identifier/number display color bug. Fixed a bug which caused the gate identifier to be colored incorrectly when displayed on the map graphics.

April 1, 2005 Visual SIMMOD - Import/Export SIMMOD bug Fixed a bug where if a RUNDATA file had an incorrect number of random number stream values the program would crash. Visual SIMMOD - Import/Export SIMMOD enhancement Implemented a progress window which details how many lines have been written to the database. Animator 2D - Defaults change Modified the default display mode for the 2D animation. The Animator nows defaults to displaying aircraft movements curved rather than merely from node to node.

March 21, 2005 Visual SIMMOD - Export SIMMOD FLOW card data bug. A bug was fixed where a the SIMMOD FLOW card was being written incorrectly. A sequential number was being written to identify the FLOW node whereas the node's actual node number should have been written. Visual SIMMOD - Import/Export SIMMOD Enhancement A field was added to several of the database tables which allows Visual SIMMOD to now retain link and node numbers during export and import of SIMMOD flatfile data. Other SIMMOD data items such as gates, routes, taxipaths, queues, and exits also retain their unique SIMMOD numbers.

February 24, 2005 Visual SIMMOD - Import/export of SIMMOD flatfile data. In some situations, airspace AIRCRAFT stack data found in the SIMU03 file may not contain the correct number of data items. Per the SIMMOD documentation this data is logically corrupt even though SIMMOD may read the data without error. The corrupt stack data can caused Visual SIMMOD's import routines to create empty stacks within Visual SIMMOD, which subsequently causes attempted runs of the simulation to fail. This enhancement allows for SIMU03 files which have corrupt AIRCRAFT stack data. Default zero values are substitued for any missing data items. During flatfile export if no taxiways are defined no MaxAlt or MaxNod values were being writtem by Visual SIMMOD. The values are optional and define the upper limits used by the taxipath optimization routines for memory allocation purposes. If no values are given default values are used by the taxipath optimization routines. If the taxipath optimization routines need limits higher than the defaults used then SIMMOD crashes. Visual SIMMOD has now been upgraded to print to the TAXIPATH card header upper limit values provided by the user (see flatfile documentation), or, if those values have not been provided, then values five times those normally used by SIMMOD as default values are printed to the header of the TAXIPATH card. Visual SIMMOD - Application upgrade bug If the user requests Visual SIMMOD to open a SIMMOD application created by a tool other than Visual SIMMOD, then the application is upgraded, if desired, to a Visual SIMMOD application. After the upgrade process Visual SIMMOD may crash due to a programming error. The programming error has now been corrected.

February 1, 2005 2D Animator, 3D Animator Added Time Scene Speed Manager tool to the program. Allows the user to define an associated time, scene, and speed set which can be then be recalled quickly in later usages of the program. Similar to saving scenes, but this is saving a combination of time, scene, and speed. Corrected bug in program which caused the color by arrival/departure/over for highlighted aircraft to fail.

January 12th, 2004 Network Builder, Animator, 3D Animator - DXF to QGF Added code to detect when a user types a latitude (or longitude, etc.) values into an entry field but fails to press the enter key. Previous versions expect the user to press the enter key into a field which is being edited to register the changed data. Merely clicking the mouse on a different widget on the screen will now register the change of data to the program. 3D Animator - DXF to QGF Added code to detect when a user types a latitude (or longitude, etc.) values into an entry field but fails to press the enter key. Previous versions expect the user to press the enter key into a field which is being edited to register the changed data. Merely clicking the mouse on a different widget on the screen will now register the change of data to the program. Reporter Corrected a bug in which the time of an event (such as a speedup operation) may be allocated to the next event. Added program registration code. Program now looks for an entry in the at_license.txt file coresponding to the Reporter module. If operating in Demo mode program will ignore operations past 8:00 pm.

January 5th, 2004 Animator 3D Added "Goto location" capability. Use to specify a direct location on the airport to which to move eye position. User may also specify a focus (or target location) at which to look. Corrected a bug in the DXF read routines which made certain elements, specifically three dimensional meshes, appear at the wrong location in the map graphics. Added licensing code. For those who have purchased the software and do not already have a license for the 3D Animator please contact us and we will provide you a license for the full version of the Animator. Added an opening splash window for those using the 3D Animator in demo mode. Indicates that the program is operating in demo mode and the recommended computer memory requirements (512 MB minimum, 1024 MB recommended). Reporter Added fuelburn reports Added controller workload reports.