We are happy to announce the release of Orca3D Version 3.1.7. This is a free update to Version 3 license holders. If you have a Version 1 or 2 license, please click here to purchase an upgrade to Version 3.

Highlights of this release include a new Conditional flooding setting for compartments, and tanks, so that if an associated opening (Point of Interest or Curve of Interest) becomes submerged the status of the compartment or tank will change from Intact to Damaged, a new Curves of Form analysis, more compact reporting and options for sections to include or exclude from reports, and much more. Please see the Release Notes below for a more complete list of additions, improvements, and bug fixes.

To update a previous installation of Orca3D Version 3, download the installation file from this page. Double-click on the downloaded file to run it, and follow the instructions.

Following is a summary of what is new in Version 3.1.7, as well as the previous releases Versions 3.1.5 and 3.1.4. For information on previous releases, please see the Release Notes.

New Features

• A new feature has been developed that allows the user to add one or more openings to any watertight compartment and then define the flooding state of the compartment in a load case to be dependent on the location of the openings relative to the external waterplane surface. This feature, known as Conditional Flooding, examines the locations of all openings defined for a particular compartment to see whether they are above or below the external waterplane at the given condition.
  • Compartment openings are defined by selecting Points of Interest and/or Curves of Interest in the Orca3D Design. You can have more than one opening for a compartment, and a given POI/COI can be associated as an opening with more than one compartment.
  • There is a new compartment mode, “Conditional,” which when set on a compartment in a given load case, treats the compartment as intact up to the point where any openings are below the external waterplane. Once an opening becomes submerged, the compartment becomes flooded (i.e., providing no buoyancy but considering its permeability like a damaged compartment).
  • Currently, if the compartment is also a tank, the tank must be empty to apply conditional flooding. Orca3D automatically checks for this and warns the user of a non-empty tank is set to conditionally flood.
  • If a POI that is used as a compartment opening is also marked as a downflooding point for stability criteria evaluation, and that POI is also a compartment opening for a Conditional compartment, the ‘Downflooding’ attribute is automatically ignored for stability criteria evaluation since the compartment floods if/when the opening is submerged.
  • The UI supports defining compartment openings both from the Compartment Properties form, where there is a new button to define openings, and from the POI and COI forms, where there are new buttons to Add/Remove/Clear compartments associated with the selected POI/COI.
  • Reporting of conditional flooding status for tanks is addressed by adding a new table to the report. Whether or not to include this report is determined by a new Orca3D reporting option.
• A new stability analysis type, Curves of Form analysis, and a corresponding new command, OrcaCurvesOfForm, has been implemented. The existing OrcaHydrostatics command also has the capability to analyze multiple hydrostatics input conditions. However, this new command has its own input form designed specifically for computing curves of form and also has its own report option settings (as described in the Enhanced Features) which allows users to easily create hydrostatics tables without including all of the detailed output for each condition.
• Added optional display of the Orca3D vessel axes (showing Fwd/Port/Up) in the Rhino viewport(s). This is intended to allow the user to quickly see if the Orca3D vessel directions match the current model. A new option was added to the View tab of the Orca3D panel to show/hide the Orca3D axes.
• Ported the command, OrcaNavCadAnalysis, to Orca3D V3 allowing the user to create a NavCad script (with STL geometry) to perform a resistance analysis in NavCad.

Enhanced Features

• Several enhancements have been made to the Orca3D reporting functionality as follows:
  • Stability reporting options have been enhanced to allow choosing different options depending on the type of stability analysis being performed (hydrostatics equilibrium, righting arm analysis, stability criteria evaluation, stability cross curves, floodable length, curves of form). For example, the user can choose to exclude condition details for a righting arm analysis while still including them in a simple hydrostatic equilibrium analysis. These analysis-specific reporting options are now saved at the Rhino application level so that they are automatically applied each time you start Rhino, instead of being saved with the Rhino document.
  • The user can now control which items are included in the Orca3D report header. Like the other reporting options, this persists at the global application level (per user).
  • Implemented user-specified sorting of basic hydrostatics output for use in reporting when multiple conditions are being analyzed. The sorting methods available in Orca3D V2 have been extended to include Sinkage, DraftAtFp, DraftAtAp, DraftAtMidships.
  • Added logic to improve reporting of tabular data to address formatting issues when tables become wider than anticipated. The POI output table of heights-above-WL with varying heel angle now becomes what had been a single table into multiple tables with up to 5 POIs per table listed across columns. Similarly, the cross curves analysis report was modified to swap rows and columns on table so that heel angles vary across columns and displacements vary across rows, and the output is broken up into multiple tables with up to 5 heel angles per table.
  • Modified POI reporting so that points that are below the free surface are highlighted in the POI table.
  • Modified stability reports to include an ID number on POIs so they can be referenced in the criteria righting arm table and heights ABWL table.
  • Modified the plotted GMt line in righting arm curves to try not to distort the vertical scale of the plot.
  • Added trim output measured as difference between draft at FP and AP to stability cross curves report (in addition to trim angle).
• Implemented the ability to export to/import from a CSV file for the Orca3D Stock Material Library.
• Added the option to display Curves of Interest in the Stability Analysis window that shows the calculation progress.
• Added persistence of the state of the “Show Tanks Only” checkbox each time the Load Case form is closed so that it reopens in the same state on opening.
• Modified the CrossCurves (and by extension Hydrostatics Curves of Form) input forms to allow specification of draft at midships in addition to sinkage or displacement.
• A modification was made to allow the user to set the visibility of the Orca3D reference layers that show up in the Rhino layers tree. There is a new option “Hide Orca3D Layers” in the Orca Properties form. If the user checks the checkbox, Orca3D layers will not be visible in the Rhino Layers panel unless the user modifies the layer filters. This setting only takes effect after restarting Rhino or loading a new Rhino document.
• Implemented logic to check for bad Rhino objects when selecting geometry for most Orca3D commands that require object selection. If a bad object is detected, the user is given a warning.
• Modified the default parameter settings in the Orca3D hydrostatics solver to accommodate a wider range of atypical hull shapes and extended the OrcaProperties command to allow the user to adjust these solver parameters if necessary. The new parameters include the maximum allowable change in heave, trim, and heel per solver iteration as described in the Help file.
• Modified the form for performing Floodable Length Analysis to (a) check the user-defined transverse bulkhead locations to make sure they are within the longitudinal bounds of the model geometry, and (b) add a button to allow the user to interactively select transverse bulkhead locations.
• Added a new command line option to the OrcaHydrostatics command, OverwriteCSV, that allows the caller to force overwriting the specified CSV file even if it already exists. Also added export of GM corrected values to CSV export.
• Modified the behavior of user-defined custom heeling moments so that if the input heel angle values are one-sided (either all positive or zero, or all negative or zero) the custom moment is treated as symmetrical about 0 heel angle. If the input heel angles contain both positive and negative values, no symmetry about 0 heel angle is assumed.
• Modified the OrcaStix command that performs the Stability Index (STIX) analysis to allow the user to specify which direction the vessel should heel. In prior versions the vessel rollover was performed in the direction to which the vessel naturally heels in equilibrium. However, sometimes the “worst” case is in the opposite rollover direction.

Bug Fixes

• Modified the Load Case form resizing logic to improve sizes of Fixed and Fluid Load data grids for different display settings.
• Fixed an issue in computing real-time hydrostatics locations (center of buoyancy, center of flotation, station of max area) in Orca3D Hull Assistants if an origin shift is applied.
• Fixed an issue in which the form for assigning Orca3D weight/cost properties to one or more Rhino objects could inadvertently set the name(s) of the selected Rhino object(s) even when the user did not intend to do so.
• Fixed an issue in which the automatic termination of the righting arm calculation for criteria evaluation occurred at too low of a heel angle if the equilibrium heel angle magnitude was greater than the heel angle increment used for the calculation.
• Fixed an issue in the stability criterion logic used to determine if the contained stability limits require a heeling arm.
• Fixed a bug in setting some of the color settings on the View tab of the Orca3D Properties form.
• Fixed an issue in which graphical output in reports for Fixed Loads and Points of Interest were not always transformed correctly to the equilibrium condition.
• Fixed an issue in the Curves of Interest form where the Calculate checkbox was not being updated to properly reflect current COI status.
• Added logic in POI/COI forms to check for duplicate names when renaming either of them.
• Fixed an issue mirroring COI.
• Fixed a bug in the scriptable command line version of the command, OrcaHydrostatics, in which the optional InitialHeight argument was not properly considering the current Rhino unit system.
• Fixed a bug in the command to create a lines drawing in which the annotation style used in the drawing was created after the title block text was drawn.
• Fixed an issue related to using Orca3D Sections for downstream analyses like creating lines drawings. It is possible in certain cases for the Rhino sectioning logic to create curves that are not in the originally defined section plane within the specified tolerance. When Orca sections tried to use these curves, it would cause an error that prevented the completion of the operation (e.g., lines drawing creation). This error is now handled so that the operation can continue with the appropriate user notification.
• Fixed an issue in the OrcaSimericsAnalysis command during creation of the spro file where there was a missing carriage return after writing the Orca version info and before writing the ‘lwl’ expression which caused the CFD report to show some error information for Excel cells that reference lwl.
• Fixed an issue in which minimizing the Rhino main window while an Orca3D Hull Assistant form was open had caused the Hull Assistant form to close and the Orca3D command to end.
• Fixed a few issues in Orca3D weight/cost functionality
  • Previously, hidden Rhino objects were not being included in the Manage Weight/Cost Items for or in the weight/cost reports
  • If any errors occurred while computing the mass properties of an item, the computation of total weight and CG in the Manage Weight/Cost Items form would fail (leaving empty fields) and any attempt to generate a weight/cost report would fail with no warning for the user. Now if an error is encountered in computing weight/cost properties for an item (a) an error is registered in the Orca3D log containing the failed object id, (b) the grid control highlights the object in red, (c) the grid totals are highlighted in red to indicate one or more items had an error, (d) the items are identified in red in the weight/cost report, (e) the user is warned when using weight/cost items in the basic hydrostatics form.
• Fixed an issue in implementation of the logic for exporting subdivision history related to creating external files for custom geometry.
• Fixed an issue in scriptable commands, OrcaCreateDesign and OrcaCreateComponent, so that informational messages do not open an interactive window requiring user interaction.
• Fixed an issue in which stability criteria righting arm curves could sometimes note multiple points on the curve with the same stability limit type (e.g., residual GZ0 points).
• Fixed units and orientation issues for Orca3D Grasshopper load condition input classes.
• Fixed a bug in OMCFD when copying an actuator disk for a self-propelled simulation in which the kt/kq data was not initialized.
• Fixed a bug in OMCFD powering report where otherwise identical propellers but with opposite rotation direction was considered invalid for reporting.
• Made a modification to Orca Grasshopper component so that it can still load (but not run) if Orca is not loaded.
• Addressed an infrequently occurring issue in computing the height of fluid in a tank during rollover calculations for certain tank geometries.
• Fixed two issues in the Orca3D STIX analysis in which (a) the required minimum angle of vanishing stability (minPhiV) was not be listed in the report for Design Categories A and B and (b) a TCG offset which caused the rollover analysis to be performed in starboard direction would fail.

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