Hot News

This summer saw the release of updates for GSA, AdSec, Safe, Alp, Frew, Greta, Slope, Mail Manager, CADtools and CADrebar. We also found time to meet with our customers and to plan what comes next.

In This Issue...

New sales office in the USA

We now have an office in New York, looking after all our customers and resellers in North and South America.

Customer Feedback Survey

In the next week or so we will be embarking on a survey to gauge customer satisfaction. The survey will be online and distributed via an email, it should only take a few minutes of your time. Your feedback will help us to serve you better, so please take the time to complete this short survey if you can.

GSA 8.2

July saw the latest update to GSA 8.2, which included improvements across the program. Here are some of the highlights.

Revit Structure 2008

With GSA 8.2 you can start your building model in Revit Structure 2008 or an earlier version, export the whole structure or just a frame to GSA for analysis and design, synchronise the changes in GSA back into Revit, and then repeat the whole cycle as many times as necessary. Alternately, you can start your model in GSA and only pass it to Revit Structure when you are ready to produce drawings. For more information click here.

2D Element Buckling

Buckling analysis is no longer restricted to just beams and bars. Now you can do the same with shell elements.

More Meshing

2D element meshing continues to improve with every release. Now you can:

• Import CAD arcs and circles as arched GSA Lines.
• Split warped quad elements to tri elements.
• Rationalise overlapping co-linear lines.
• Offset 2D elements half their depth during meshing.
• Generate edge beam elements.
• Create Lines from Beams and vice versa.

For more details of what is in GSA 8.2, click here or download GSA and see for yourself.

AdSec 8.0

The new release of AdSec 8.0 includes the latest amendments to the Hong Kong Code of Practice and the American ACI 318 and 318M design codes.

This release also sees improvements to the general reinforcement wizard, enabling you to copy information to and from a spreadsheet, and enhancements to the graph views giving you more control over the display of the data.

Geotechnical 18.2

We have now completed the 18.2 release of the entire geotechnical suite. The interface on all the programs has been upgraded to include improved menus and toolbars, plus you can now access all the model data through a "gateway". The gateway uses a folder-like tree structure to group model data by category, making it easy to find what you are looking for.

Other highlights of the latest releases include:

• 3D graphics in Vdisp.
• A new mesh generator in Safe, which allows you to control and revise the mesh generation.
• Auto-calculation of Kq and Kc values in Alp for every node based on the local angle of friction.
• Create a Safe model directly from Frew.
• Use Greta to optimize the base width before checking the ultimate bearing, sliding and overturning of gravity retaining walls.

Mail Manager 4.1

In August we released Mail Manager 4.1. The headline enhancement on this latest version is offline filing, which enables you to file emails even though you are not connected to the network. Changes are synchronised when you next connect to the network.

Other improvements include:

• Save emails in a format that earlier versions of Outlook can open.
• Add Mail Manager filing locations, and send Mail Manager links direct from Windows Explorer.
• Display the number of attachments in the Search window.

For the complete list of enhancements and to see for yourself how Mail Manager will get your email problems under control, check out http://www.oasys-software.com/mailmanager

Columbus 3.2

We are currently working on the next version of Columbus. We hope to tell you more about it in the next issue, but while you are waiting, take a look at the presentation from the User Group Meeting presentation from NBS, the National Building Specification, on how we are creating a custom version of Columbus for their customers.

CADtools 2.1 & CADrebar 2.2

This summer saw the release of CADtools 2.1 and CADrebar 2.2, both of which now support AutoCAD 2007 and 2008.

User Group Forum 07 Report

On May 17 this year, a group of users gathered together with us to look at the exciting new features in the engineering and document management software, to share how they have been using the programs over the year, and to discuss where the applications need to develop next.

The presentations covered a wide spectrum, from tips on modelling soil berms in Frew, to how Columbus is revolutionising the work of NBS.

For more details and presentations, check out http://www.oasys-software.com/support/events/user_group_2007

If you want to know more about anything mentioned here, give us a call.

Oasys Limited, established in 1976, is the software house of Arup, a global organization of consulting engineers, planners and project managers working in all areas of the built environment, infrastructure, transportation, water, vehicle engineering etc.

Subscribing to the Oasys Newsletter

To subscribe to this newsletter, please complete the form at http://www.oasys-software.com/register4News/

All back issues can be found at http://www.oasys-software.com/newsletter/

Unsubscribing from the Oasys Newsletter

To unsubscribe from this newsletter, send an email to listserv@oasys-software.com with the message unsubscribe oasys-software-news in the body. This must be sent from the email address that you used when you subscribed.

Shortly after this you will receive an email confirming your request.