The following new license categories have been provided;

• Hull Generation
• HydroForm
• Seagoing Structures Beta

The following new objects have been provided in existing license categories;

FREDYN Interface through the File -> Export menu, it is possible to export ship and compartment definitions to files which can then be read into FREDYN (which is a dynamic stability analysis tool used by QinetiQ) for further analysis.

The following object has been added:

 graph_2Y (Used to plot various rectangular graphs with 2 Y axes)

The following objects have been added:

  eff_power_Delft_Sail_Yacht(Effective power method for sail yachts)

  eff_power_MoorMurdey (Effective power method for naked hulls using Moor Murdey method)

  eff_power_Savitsky (Effective power method for planing craft)

  eff_power_Submarine (Effective power method for submarines, both submerged and surfaced)

  powering_app_mast_rig (Appendage to work in conjunction with eff_power_Delft_Sail_Yacht)

  powering_app_propeller (Appendage to work in conjunction with eff_power_Delft_Sail_Yacht)

  powering_MoorMurdey_HeavePitch (Effective power method for submarines, both submerged and surfaced)

  submarine_powering_from_geom (Extracts data from geometry to work in conjunction with eff_power_submarine)

The following object has been added:

  sheet_pointer - a pointer to a sheet object used for Seagoing

The following object has been added:

  solid_hierarchy_pointer - object is used to refer to a heirarchy of solid_body objects, such as a subdivided hull, in various situations

The following object has been added:

  damage_to_added_weight - converts damage spaces into added weight tanks

  docking_analysis - these enhanced docking calculations are an improvement on the NES109_docking object. It uses the docking_condition (including it's uncertainties and damage case) to calculate the suing load on the ship and how the stability changes during the drain down of the dock.

  docking_condition - allows the user to set up the ship condition for the docking_analysis object. It allows the user to change tanks, weights and a damage case until the ship is in a suitable condition for docking. It also incorporates an uncertainty factor for the tank fullness and weights.

  launch_placeholder - can be inserted under a stab_placeholder, containing launching specific objects

  launch_arc_definition - allows the user to define the slipway by an arc method used for the launch

  launch_ways_definition - allows the user to define the slipway used for the launch.

  launch_stern_analysis - uses the launch_ways_definition object to analyse a stern launch

  launch_dragchain - object is used by the lauch_stern_dynamics uses the launch_ways_definition object to analysea stern laun

  launch_stern_dynamics - calculates the dynamics of the launch as defined in launch_stern_analysis

  wet_limiting_KG - calculates the limiting KG for different trim and draught combinations

  wet_limiting_KG_condition - object allows you to specify a "condition", consisting of a draught and trim together with a particular configuration of tanks, for use with the wet_limiting_KG object

The following object has been added:

  enhanced_structural_definition - groups, girders, panels, stiffeners and profiles with attributes

  extra_panel_generator - object allows you to generate additional panels that are wholly within a given space (or spaces)

The following object has been added:

  hull_surfaces2 - the object is used in conjunction with port hull surfaces, automating the task which parameterises the B-spline surface to Paramarine's convention.

The following object has been added:

  ranked_structural_entity - objects are provided as outputs of the structural_ranking_definition defining a plate or stiffener with an associated ranking number.

  structural_ranking_definition - object provides a complete definition of all rankings of structural entities in a vessel design.

  structural_ranking_generator - object is used to draw up the DEFAULT rankings for elements of the ship's structure.

The licensing subsystem has had a minor review as part of the Paramarine V4.0 changes. The two notable features affecting the user are:

• The GRC License Config program, used to identify the license server they wish to use and for input of license update strings, has two new fields. The first indicates the Server Unique Identifier. This is currently not relevant to Paramarine and is used in the licensing of GRC's other premier product, Seagoing Paramarine. The second field added indicates the Dongle Reference of the dongle attached to the referenced license server. This is the reference GRC Support team request of all users when requiring help.
• The other notable feature is that if a dongle is inserted into a PC that is running the GRC MerIT License Server then it can be used immediately without the need to reboot the PC in question or wait for any length of time.

In previous releases, the action of certain objects (e.g. guillotine) destroyed any created output objects if they became NOT_VALID. This does not happen any longer. Instead the outputs remain but they become NOT_VALID as well. This preserves any wiring from the outputs to descendant objects within the design.

Paramarine now uses V14.1 of the Parasolid modelling library.

The behaviour of the following objects has been improved. Changes in the structure of objects are automatically incorporated when opening design files saved in previous versions of Paramarine:

• cadrcs and cadrcs_terrain algorithms used for framing the bitmap images has been improved.
• patch_sheet - now remains valid should there be only one sheet or surface in the 'patches' folder, which used to cause the object to become NOT_VALID, and the 'result' sheet corresponds to this one input.
• profile - section outlines are now generated automatically depending on the type of profile chosen.
• sheet - now possible to perform a circle operation.

• eff_power_Holtrop a choice for 'calculate_half_angle_by_method' has been added to this object. It allows the user to decide whether the half angle of entrance is calculated or, if defining from geometry the value is taken from the powering_data_from_geom object. The 'half_angle_of_entrance' can be a user input if defining values directly.
• eff_power_Taylor when the calibrated Taylor Gertler method was originally implemented, it included a correlation allowance of 0.0004. If the user was then to also use a correlation allowance there was a risk of double accounting. The method no longer assumes a correlation allowance and therefore prevents double accounting. This change does not affect the HDDS Regression method when using Taylor.
• propeller_finder now also contains the high speed propeller series SSPA_Ma.

• grounding_analysis now has an option where the user can define the x location of the grounding point.

The typical calculation time for GZ calculations on a wave have been reduced. This has been achieved by the following modifications;

• Curve models of solid and plate bodies are now generated automatically by the GZ object. This behaviour is controlled by the stability_settings object which has a new switch labelled 'allow_curve_models'. By default this is set to 'yes', but the user can deliberately avoid the new feature by changing this to 'no'.
• There is a need for the user to see when a curve model has been used, and the quality of this in terms of the number of, or density of, curves used. This is achieved through the GZ_visualiser object which now has a new switch labelled 'show_curves_if_used' which is set to 'yes' by default.
• Curve models are preserved during saving and loading. For this reason it is possible for a design to hold unnecessary curve models, or curve models with greater resolution than subsequently required. These redundant curve models take up unnecessary RAM and hard disk space. A facility has been provided to monitor the amount of space being taken up by curve models via the menu option "Tools > Temporary Data...". This also provides the ability to destroy all curve models if required.

• critical_section object has the addition of a picture object that allows the user to export all of the critical section elements in a DXF file format.
• girder attributes have been removed from girders.
• panel attributes have been removed from panels.
• stiffener_schema_adaptive, stiffener_schema_frames and stiffener_schema_planar have had the attributes removed.

• HULCOL_strength_analysis object has been extensively modified and re-named from before. It used to be called "longitudinal_strength_analysis"

It is now possible to read in Seagoing Paramarine config / simulation and standard condition files and have the corresponding objects inserted and set up in the same way that the Seagoing data object was at the time the config file was saved. This allows “shore based teams” to analyse the results shown to users of Seagoing Paramarine at sea, for example in an emergency response situation.

There are numerous improvements to the Graphical User Interface. The most significant of these are:

Fast zoom to select - by double clicking the middle mouse button (only available on 3 button mice) on the object in the tree pane, the object will be zoomed to fit the display case if it has a graphical representation. Multiple objects can be zoomed on by using <CTRL> + double clicking the middle button.

Find dialog in the Tools menu has been enhanced in a number of ways;

• The search is now performed on the full name of the objects.
• The find dialog remembers the last searched strings and offers them in a drop down.
• A 'Clear Results' button has been added.
• Graphs - the appearance speed and quality has been improved.
• High resolution capture of the graphics_pane window is now possible. The capture tool is accessible from the Toolbar directly (button image) and through the Tools menu. This allows the user to generate a high resolution image, as the the bitmap is placed on the Windows® Clipboard or can be saved to a file if the user so chooses. This feature will be useful if you need to generate high quality images for reproduction on large formats, or for inclusion in presentations etc. If this is the case, GRC would naturally be delighted if you could acknowledge the software which produced these images.
• Hide display case button on the Toolbar allows the user to toggle the display case on and off.
• Properties dialog in the Object menu now has "sticky" pages, such that the dialog reappears with the last viewed tab.
• There is now a Paste Special option in the Edit menu. This allows the user to copy items and have them pasted as pointer(s) under the target object. If the target can accept another type of object, and this object has a pointer to the copied item below it, this object will be inserted and the pointer set. The objects can be copied from either the graphic or tree pane. This command is very useful when creating structural definitions and watertight definitions, or in any situation where numerous pointers have to be inserted under target objects.