Pathfinder 2009.1

What's New

Thank you very much to our beta testers who helped identify the issues resolved below.

Improvements over the Previous Release:

• The Users Guide, Examples, and Technical Reference have been updated to represent the current version of Pathfinder.
• Created a Getting Started document to help introduce new users to Pathfinder.
• The default value for "Max Room Density" (SFPE mode only) has been lowered from 3.55 pers/m^2 to 1.88 pers/m^2. The original value approximately the maximum possible fill, the new value is D[max].
• The "runtime visualization" is now only available from the Run Simulation dialog (click Debug).
• Increased the size of the recently opened files list (from 4 to 10).
• The busy cursor will now appear during several long actions that previously could cause the software to appear frozen.
• When occupants are drawn as disks or cylinders, an inset triangle will now be drawn to indicating the facing direction.
• In the 3D results, it is now possible to view all floors of a building simultaneously in a tiled layout.
• Merged the 2D and 3D floor extraction tools. The 2D Z-based floor extraction dialog has been removed.
• Time history plots can now be viewed with a 5 time step (output) moving average.
• Fixed a bug in the steering mode calculation for movement speed on stairs. This fix will cause occupants to move more slowly on stairs in steering mode simulations.
• Added additional logging for crashes. Crash logs will usually be created in your simulation model directory or home directory (if unsaved).
• Fixed a bug that caused Pathfinder to crash while drawing doors.
• Fixed a bug that prevented Pathfinder from saving or running correctly when the simulation contained a large number of floors (50+).
• The copy/transform tool will now append "(Copy n)" to the name of copied objects.
• Simulations can now be resumed from snapshot even if the simulation folder has changed.
• Fixed a tolerance bug that was causing occupants to become stuck.
• Fixed several bugs related to movement across hilly mesh surfaces.
• Simulation CPU time is now included in the summary results file.
• Fixed a tolerance bug that caused the simulation to become stuck when an occupant arrived very near an exit door.
• Removed the option to view occupants as spheres.
• Closing the simulation dialog will now prompt to save a simulation snapshot.
• Fixed a bug that caused occupant now to exit if they unintentionally crossed an exit door.
• Fixed a bug that could cause agents to become stuck when rounding corners or when traversing "skinny" triangles.
• In the Simulation Parameters, for SFPE-mode simulations, renamed the "Collision Handling" option to "Add Basic Collisions."
• Fixed a bug that caused Pathfinder to crash when changing the View mode to "View as People" after zooming in.
• Fixed a bug in the undo system that was interfering with room deletion.
• When splitting rooms, the larger room will now retain its color.
• Fixed a bug that caused the door tool to incorrectly "lock in" for thin doors.
• Fixed several bugs that could prevent the Add Occupants action from correctly filling under-sized room with a smaller group of occupants.
• Re-selecting the current floor via the Floors box will now cause the current floor to be shown.
• In the 3D results, improved the appearance of the playback controls.
• Live video recording will no longer offer AVI as a format option.
• Live video recording will now use variable bit rate encoding.
• Modified the screenshot and video recorder subsystems for improved hardware compatibility.
• Fixed a bug that was causing tiny mysterious boxes to appear in text fields on computers with limited font support.
• Fixed several bugs that could cause SFPE-mode simulations to become stuck in crowded, counterflow situations.