So what is in the new version?

Evacuation

We now have evacuation events in MassMotion. What this means is that the agents can be going about their tasks, whether looking for a platform or queuing for processing, but when the evacuation event is activated they all freeze in place before heading for the nearest exit. The pause between their halt and egress is defined by a pre-movement curve, meaning that some will be leaving while others are still working out what to do, or getting in the way depending on where they are.

One thing to watch out for is that as you determine when in the analysis the evacuation event takes place, it is worthwhile stopping the spawning of new agents at that time. If you don't they will pile-up at the entry portals when they arrive and halt. Similarly, if you are modelling egress from a static start (say an office evacuation) then you are best spawning the agents with the exit links gated and shut so that no one starts to move during the spawning.  When the “alarm goes off”, open the links; the evacuation event will then take over. Alternately spawn the agents with no exit portal defined in their profiles: they will simply stand in place until the evacuation event starts.

As you will not necessarily know where the agents will be when the evacuation event happens, the agents can now be told to go for their nearest exit rather than having to explicitly state where each is to go.

BIM

As Building Information Modelling is becoming more and more common, MassMotion now has an IFC importer. This will recognise standard elements such as floors, stairs, ramps and walls, automatically converting them to MassMotion actors. The options include importing either slabs or rooms from Revit as floors, but be careful if you take both as you may get overlapping floor areas. If you use the rooms option then the Revit doorways will be converted to MassMotion Links between the resulting floors.

Do watch out if your Revit model is a long way from the origin, as MassMotion objects may have trouble validating due to rounding errors when the model extents are dozens of kilometres from the origin.

Simulation

The main change in the MassMotion simulator is the ability to toggle the graphics for the simulation on and off. This allows you to take advantage of the rapid processing without the graphics slowing things down, and then switch them back on to visual checking of the simulation for critical times, and vice versa.

Softimage

MassMotion workbench is now faster at loading models with ICE Actors (i.e. results).

Please note that MassMotion now only supports Softimage 2012, so you will need to upgrade if you are still using 2011.