Recent Developments

Additions and Bug Fixes

All additions and bug fixes for each version can be found in the Readme.txt file, commonly found in the C:\Program Files\AEI Software\IRRICAD Pro 10\Help folder.

Pro Version 10 Additions

Pro Version 9.5 Additions

Pro Version 9 Additions

In Pro Version 10.0

Hatch & Fill Editing

It is now possible to edit a fill as a Geometric Object. This allows the colour and the layer to be changed.

Hatch editing has also been enabled, allowing all properties of a hatch to be changed.

Text Dialog Improvements

The text dialog now displays using the font and text properties specified (for non-vector fonts). This enables the user to better judge how the text will actually look when rendered on the design. This is particularly useful for labels and when using mono-spaced fonts.

Keyword Combo

A keyword dropdown box has also been added to the Label text dialog. This displays and briefly describes the label keywords, and allows them to be easily inserted.

Labels

The current label text settings are shown in a button tooltip on the Label Settings dialog.
Update Labels no longer resets the position of labels that have been manually moved. The new location is now retained.

New Keywords

More comprehensive hydraulic labeling has been enabled with the introduction of several new label keywords:

Added new Label keywords for Irrigation Blocks:

See Appendix J, Section 6.10 1 for the list of keywords and where they can be used.

User Attributes and User Keyword

A 'User Attributes' text field has been added to control valves, water supplies, block entities and miscellaneous hydraulic items. It allows the user to attach any textual information to these items, that can be subsequently displayed in labels and reports.

See the User Manual, User Attributes and User Keyword, Section 2.7.11.11 for instructions on using keywords to achieve the desired result.

Go To Coordinates

The automatic pasting of coordinates into Go To Coordinates and into the Settings|Grid / Origin dialogs has been enabled. This means that a coordinate string copied from the Object Info screen which includes both X and Y coordinates, units and descriptors (e.g. x = 25.28 m, y = 8.46 m) can be inserted in one action into the appropriate fields in these dialogs..

Hydraulic Item Creation

All hydraulic and electrical items can now be created from relevant drawing items. By simply highlighting a drawing item you can turn it into an Area, Outlet, Pipe, Control Valve, Pump, Irrigation Block, Light, Controller, Wire, Misc. Electrical, Misc. Hydraulic, Sprayline or Tape.The behavior of creating hydraulic items from drawing items is listed in the User Manual, Converting Drawing Items into Hydraulic Entities, Section 2.4.3.

Names

Holding the key down when placing a zone valve, mainline outlet or mainline spraylines now doesn't show the “Name” dialog but accepts the default name.

Unconnected Spray Block Entity

It is now possible to specify that a sprayline block entity be ‘unconnected’ – that is, to created a sprayline block consisting of individual pipes and outlets.

Document Summary Info

Design details are now copied to the design file properties summary information section, allowing specific designs to be more readily identified in Windows Explorer.

Merge Designs

IRRICAD designs may now be merged together using the Merge… option in the File menu. This function will merge drawing and hydraulic objects, as well as fittings selection, Management and Design information.

Status bar – Info Panel

Added the z-coord to the Info panel. This displays the elevation, calculated from the DEM, at the current mouse position. If the DEM has not been created then ‘No Elevation’ is displayed.

Zone Design Configuration

Improvements have been made to the sizing of the Zone Design Configuration dialog – it can now be dragged to a larger size. In addition the space bar can now be used to toggle check boxes.

The minimum/maximum emitter pressures from the zone design configuration dialog are now copied to the clipboard as two tab-separated numbers. This means that when values from the table are pasted into Excel, separate columns will be created for each of these values.

Design Parameters

In Design Parameters the last visited tab is now remembered.

Report Templates

Added the ability to create report templates that save directly to a file, this is accomplished by adding keywords to the Report Options in the report template editor. Possible keywords are:- #CSV# - Excel comma separated values; #TSV# - Tab separated values; #TXT# - standard text file; #XML# - text file where all leading and trailing blanks are removed also blank lines.

Saving To Previous Versions of IRRICAD

A more generic 'Save As' functionality has been Implemented. Designs can now be saved in the format of all previous versions of IRRICAD (to Version 7).See File|Export – “Save as type”

New Toolbars

New toolbars with many new icons, including large icons and popup menus, have been added. In addition, the currently enabled tool and snap is indicated on toolbars.

Any toolbar docking area can now be customized by right-clicking on any icon or toolbar. This is simply a short cut to the View|Toolbars option and allows immediate customization.

Zone Pressure Limits now Editable

The format of the minimum/maximum zone pressure label can now be edited.Go in to Reports|Report Settings and click on the [Text] button.

Symbol Colors

Multi-colored symbols may be selected for Valves etc. If a symbol is specified with the "Use symbol colour(s)”, in the database editor, then the symbol will be displayed using the colors contained in the symbol definition.

Changes to Importing Contours

Drawing and elevation data from CSV and ESRI SHP files can now be directly imported into IRRICAD.

Elevation data is entered via File|Import Contours while File|Import is used for normal drawing information.

See the User Manual, Importing a DXF, VCD, DWG, GCD, SHP MIF or CSV File, Section 2.4.1.1 for importing tips and instructions.

Trim Elevations

A Trim Elevations tool has been added to the Tools menu.

New Copy Tools

Mirror and Offset copy tools have been added to the Tools|Copy menu.All Copy tools have been enabled for use with hydraulic objects.

Multiple Water Supply Systems

Designs with multiple but separate water supplies can now be fully analyzed (and LP Design used where appropriate) directly. It is no longer necessary to ‘join’ the separate systems with notional pipes. When the systems are completely separate, no pressure or flow information needs to be entered. However if more than one water supply is feeding the same system, at least the pressures need to be entered as before.

New Tools

Trim and Extend are now available as are Move to Front and Move to Back Z-Order tools.

Back Up Folder Specification

The location of the Backup folder can now be specified in Settings|Miscellaneous.

In Pro Version 9.5

Dongle Serial Number

The serial number of the Irricad dongle is now displayed in the program title.

Insert OLE Changes

Bitmap data on the clipboard can now to be inserted/pasted into Irricad. This enables copy and paste of HGL charts.

Block Pipe Stubs

The pipe stub functionality of irrigation block entities has been extended. The block now supports three stub lengths, one for the submain and two for the valve:

1.The Submain Stub

2.The Valve Submain Stub

3.The Valve Stub

Block Valve Positioning

Control valve placement in block entities can now be entered as a percentage distance along the submain.

Flushing Manifolds

A new tab has been added to the block entity tools allowing flushing manifolds to be automatically created.

Label Rounding & Roll Lengths

It is now possible to round numeric values in labels to a ‘nearest value’. New keywords (#ROLLS# and #ROLLS3D# cf. #LENGTH# and #LENGTH3D#) have also been added, such that pipe lengths can be displayed as a number of ‘rolls’ (based on the roll length of the pipe type in the database – see the Pipe Fitting Matching Table).

Hydraulic Gradeline

After a design is completed it is now possible to view the hydraulic gradeline (HGL) of mainline pipes as well as zone pipes and tapes. The tool can be accessed from the Reports menu.

Mainline Gradelines

The HGL tool cannot automatically determine which mainline ‘path’ to analyze. The user must therefore select the mainline pipes to be included before invoking the tool.

Gradeline Toolbar

Some new functions have been add to the HGL dialog and are accessible using the toolbar.

The y-axis on HGL graphs has been changed to elevation rather than pressure units (converts pressures to equivalent hydrostatic elevation).

Toggling the elevation in the Hydraulic Gradeline dialog now adds or removes elevations from the data sets, as opposed to just showing or hiding the elevation series.

Status Bar

Three new panels have been added to the status bar. All the panel options can be selected by right-clicking the panel to access a popup menu, or left clicking to cycle through the available options.

Info Panel

This panel displays a variety of information about the currently selected objects. This includes UID, connections, selected item count, cumulative length of selected items, elevation and depth, cumulative area and cumulative nominal flow. The menu also allows the user to select the items connected to the current item.

Snap Panel

This panel shows the currently selected default snap mode (Connect, Place or Grid) and, through the popup menu, allows quick access to the Snap and Grid settings.

Selection Filter Panel

This panel shows the status of the selection filter - a red panel indicates that the filter is active. The user can also access the filter settings through the popup menu and flip the filter status using Ctrl+Shift+F

When active, a summary of the current filter settings is shown in the tooltip for this panel:

Select Tool

The select tool now has the following features:

• The tool defaults to selecting a single object at a time. Multiple selections can be made by holding the Shift key. Permanent multi-select can be enabled from the Settings|Mouse menu.
• In the single select mode clicking nothing (empty space) will clear the current selection.
• Window-select mode can be entered by holding down the left button and dragging the mouse.
• A block may be automatically selected from a block sub-item (e.g., a lateral) by holding down the Alt key when selecting. The block outline (irrigation area) must be visible for this to work.
• Pressing the Esc key twice in quick succession will now clear the current selection and return the user to the default Select tool.

Snaps

Snaps are now enabled for the Move tool.

Layers Menu

A dynamic layers menu has been added to the default right-click context menu. This provides a quick way for the user to enable or disable layers. It also includes two shortcut functions 'Hide Layer' (Ctrl+Shift+H) hides the layer of the currently selected item, while 'Show Layer' (Ctrl+Shift+L) re-shows the last hidden layer (the menu shows which layer will be hidden or restored).

Converting Drawing Items into Hydraulic Items

Irrigated Areas can now be created from polylines and curves (in the same way as the block entity tools).

Object Info

The display of hydraulic and debug object info can now be controlled directly from the object info dialog.

Go To Coordinates

The Go To Coordinates dialog now retains the last set of coordinates.

Irrigated Areas

In a similar manner to block entities, irrigated areas can now be created from existing geometric entities, including curves.

Object Scope Flag

A 'scope' flag has been added to many hydraulic items. This allows for 'BOM only' items which are included in BOM / Costing reports but not included in hydraulic design. The user may also specify 'Design Only' items, which are treated normally in the design process but do not feature in the BOM / Costing reports (can be used to specify existing irrigation equipment).

Added the ability to globally change scope (Design + BOM etc.) for all hydraulic items at one time. To do this select the items required and then use the Change tool (not Change Type) and adjust the "Scope" field. Note that objects that do not have scope (drawing items, junctions etc.) are unaffected by changes to this field.

Zone Pressure Minimum and Maximum

When creating Min/Max pressure labels for selected valves labels for other valves are no longer cleared. Note that any existing labels for the selected valves are also not cleared and need to be deleted manually before operating the tool.

Reports

Added keywords to costing reports for the coordinates of unconnected pipes and spraylines. This means that a report can be created listing the locations of all unconnected items in a design.

Uniformity

The design process now calculates a number of zone uniformity parameters, which are available in the zone reports.

Help Menu

The dongle version number is now shown in Help|Help About.

Added a link to the Irricad web site in the Help menu.

Recent Files

Increased the number of recent files shown in the File menu to 8.

Database

Made a change to the database editor so that fractional numbers of items can be added to assemblies.

Fittings are now selected for two-ended items (e.g. Misc Hydraulic) that are only connected on one side.

Irricad databases can now be edited and save in newer versions of Microsoft Access. Additional versions now supported are 2000, XP (2002), 2003 and 2007. Note that once a database has been converted to the newer format it will no longer be able to be used in previous versions of Irricad (i.e. earlier than V9.50).

In the database editor increased the limit for "% above" flow/pressure tolerance for Outlets to 2000%.

Emitter Coefficient of Variation (COV)

A new field for the COV (CV_M) has been added to the database editor for Tapes and Nozzles. This is simply entered as a number, in the following example the COV is 0.03 (3%).

In Pro Version 9

New Visual CADD Engine

This version upgrades the version of VisualCadd Dlls to V5.06.137.

Inserting OLE Data

Items such as Irricad reports, spreadsheets, documents etc. can now be inserted into the Irricad design.

Edit|Paste:This option allows only a single instance of the object to be inserted.

Tools|Insert OLE:Allows multiple instances of the object to be inserted.

Edit|Open OLE Item:OLE items that have previously been added can be opened and altered in the appropriate application.

OLE objects print first in PDF files, so that they don't obscure the design.

Areas

The maximum number of Irrigation Areas has been increased to 1001.

The maximum number of areas that can be enclosed by another has been increased to 1000.

The maximum number of Areas a Zone can span has been increased to 25.

Zones may now span multiple Irrigation Areas (e.g. a zone made up of multiple block entities) when calculating area and water requirements. Note that the V7 style reports (if enabled) still only allow for zones being in one area.

Tape and Spray Irrigation Blocks

This version introduces the concept of ‘Block Entities’ which are essentially an extension of the current block tools.Bock Entities retain the drawn boundary of the block tools as an Irrigation Area and ‘group’ the laterals contained by them. They also facilitate the automatic placement of submains, creation of block labels, and simplify the process of changing the type, spacing etc. oflaterals.

At present blocks of tapes or blocks of Spraylines can be treated in this way they can be created by selecting Tape Irrigation Blocks or Spray Irrigation Blocks from the Zone menu. Note that you may need to add these to your Toolbar by selecting the View|Toolbars menu item (on the Commands tab select Hydraulic Tools and then dragging the button onto the desired toolbar).

Most of the items on this dialogs are self-explanatory. The fields on the Lateral tab have exactly the same function as those on the Tape Block or Sprayline Block tool dialogs. Similarly those on the Area tab are identical to those on the Irrigation Area tool dialog.

Any line can be used when specifying the submain direction (i.e. not just block boundaries).

See the Tool and Command Reference or User Manual for more information.

Labels

Added "Check Label Length" and "Label Length Allowance" fields to the Label settings tab. These values were previously only available by editing the registry. They are now saved for each design.

Now Irrigation Areas can be labeled using the Irrigation block label settings.

When labeling pipes, with the "Combine Pipes" option set, Zone and Mainline pipes are now considered independently. This means, for example, that submain connected to an inline valve doesn't force multiple labels in the mainline pipes at that point.

The text colour for labels can now be specified in Settings|Labels [Text].

New Keywords

Added new Label keywords for Irrigation Blocks:

If the label does currently have a value then ‘NA’ is displayed.

Plot Templates Keywords Added

More keywords have been enabled for Plot Templates:-

Running Snaps Changes

Running Snaps have now been enabled for hydraulic tools.

Snaps Changes

Standard drawing snaps have now been enabled for hydraulic tools.

Undo Vertex

Added Undo Vertex to the Right-click menu when drawing polyline items (applies to all hydraulic and drawing ‘Polyline’ tools).

Change Match Dialog Changes

The Change/Match dialog has been changed to a grid format.

Valve Connector Tool

IRRICAD has a tool that automatically connects control valves to the nearest mainline. To run this select Connect Valves from the Tools menu.

Design Parameters Changes

In Design Parameters changed the recommended minimum for velocity to 0.1 m/s and recommended minimum/maximum for lateral length to 1.0 and 100.0 m respectively.

New Tape calculation method

This version includes a new method of analyzing tapes where the elevation at each emitter (or virtual emitter) is used in the calculations. To enable this method select DEM Elevations in the “Elevation Calculation Method” dropdown box of the Analysis tab under the Design|Design Parameters menu item.

Connectivity Check

The Connectivity check has been improved. Unconnected outlets, tapes, spraylines and valves are indicated on screen by a special symbol. The coordinates of the unconnected items are no longer displayed in warning messages but are logged to the error log file and can be viewed with View Errors under the Reports menu.

Clear Connectivity Marks

The Clear Connectivity Marks menu item will remove all connectivity symbols, any existing symbols are also removed as part of the connectivity check.

Subdivision Tool

The Subdivision tool allows existing Irrigation Block entities to be subdivided into smaller sub blocks. It can be selected from the Tools menu. In common with the majority of Irricad tools it can be applied to an existing selection or, if no items are selected, applied to a particular object by clicking on that object.

New Management Options

The management options in the Design menu have been rearranged and a new graphically based option added.

The new option is called Assign System Flows to Zones.

Management Symbol

The graphical management process automatically creates a symbol, representing the current management arrangement, that can be subsequently drawn onto the plan (see figure below).

This symbol is accessed from Draw|Management Symbol, a symbol dialog is displayed that contains the normal symbol placement and creation options.

Convert to Elevations Changes

Made changes to the Convert to Elevations tool so that only items on visible layers are considered when attempting to join lines to create contours.

Import Contours

Import Contours now allows for multiple entities sections and also for LWPOLYLINE DXF entities.

Extra information about the number of contour segments found during Import Contours has been included. The number of raw and simplified segments is now shown.

Contour Simplification

Irricad has an internal limit for the number of contour segments that can be used during the elevation interpolation process. If contours are imported from a DXF file it is occasionally possible for this limit to be exceeded due to a combination of the ‘smoothness’ (i.e. the number of small line segments making up the line) and the number of contours lines that are imported. It is also possible for a similar situation to arise when using the Convert to Elevations tool.

In this version a facility has been added to ‘simplify’ any curves and polylines, that are imported as contours (or selected by the Convert to Elevations tool), to avoid exceeding the allowable number of contour segments. Two new items have been added to the Irrigation Items option of the Settings menu ( see figure below) to control the behavior of this option.

Elevation Colour Coding

The new Highlight Elevations tool colour codes contours and spot heights based on their elevation making any anomalies much easier to locate and correct.

The tool is activated by simply selecting Highlight Elevations from the Tools menu. When the tool is selected the range of elevation is displayed on the dialog.

3D DEM View

If DEM Elevations has been selected for the “Elevation Calculation Method” in the Analysis Parameters tab of Design Parameters then it is also possible to view a 3D representation of the resulting ground surface. The advantage of this 3D view is that small inconsistencies in elevations, that are not apparent with colour coding, can located visually.

This facility is available by selecting 3D DEM View from the Reports menu. Elevations of the DEM points are colour coded in a similar fashion to contours – from red through yellow green and then blue.

Re-interpolate Elevations

Re-interpolate Elevations on the Design menu now re-interpolates all elevations (not just new Hydraulic Items).

Improved Zone Design Configuration Table

The menu item for this option has been moved to immediately above Zone Design and many improvements have been made to the functionality of the dialog.

Zone Pressure Minimum and Maximum

A reporting function has been added that indicates the position and pressure value of the minimum and maximum pressure emitters for a zone (control valve).

Settings for the minimum and maximum zone pressure labels can be found in Reports|Report Settings.

Reports Viewer

Incorporated a new version of the report writing/viewing engine. Only minor cosmetic changes including enabling the mouse wheel in the report viewer.

Zone Reports

A new brief tabular report has been added entitled Zone CV Table.

The Zone Design Summary report has been re-titled Zone Design Summary (Pressure Variation).

A revised Zone Design Summary report now includes flow variations and the location of the emitters having the minimum and maximum pressures.

Added ZoneArea field to Zone Design Reports. Note this only allows for zones being in one area at the moment and will only be populated when a zone is inside an Irrigation Area or Irrigation Block.

The Zone Design Summary and Zone CV Table reports are now ordered by Zone name. In addition the calculation of percentage pressure and flow ranges has been changed to 100*(Max - Min)/Max rather than 100*(Max - Min)/Nominal or 100*(Max-Min)/((Max+Min)/2).

Mainline Reports

A version of the Mainline Pipe Report that lists nodes rather than coordinates has been added. Normally this would be used in conjunction with labelling using the ‘UID’ keyword to identify junctions on the plan.

A Water Supply elevation field has been added to the mainline reports (Sysflow->WSElevation).

Zones are now sorted by name in the Mainline Summary Report and ML Design Pipe Report – Nodes.

Added an ‘OutletFlow field for mainline reports.

The headloss through a control valve is now available in the MLItem->Outloss mainline report field.

Converting Drawing Items into Hydraulic Entities

It is now possible to convert drawing items, both those drawn in IRRICAD or imported via a DXF/DWG file, to hydraulic items. This is achieved by selecting the required drawing items and then the appropriate hydraulic tool. Currently tapes and all block tools (including Tape Block entities) can operate this way.

Hydraulic Gradeline

After a design is completed it is now possible to view the hydraulic gradeline of submain, spraylines and tapes. The tool can be access from the Reports menu.

Hydraulic Dialog Settings

The last values entered or database items selected in all the dialogs for Hydraulic Items are now retained with each individual design. Previously they would revert to the default values.

Undo Vertex

This command allows you to sequentially ‘undo’ placement of the line segments while running the Continuous Polyline. You can correct a misplaced segment without having to erase then redraw the entire line. If desired, Right-click|Undo Vertex can be repeated over and over again until the current line is completely undone.

Pipe Legend

If placeholder lines in the pipe legend templates have a line width, IRRICAD now allows for that line width to be used when pipe legends are created as part of Draw|Plot Layout.

Mouse Wheel

Panning via the mouse wheel button (by clicking and dragging the mouse wheel) has been added.

Database Changes

A utility to ‘clean’ fields in databases has been added to the database editor. This utility is used to correctly format fields, in the database, after directly importing data via Access. It is not necessary to use this if data has been entered via the Irricad database editor.

Selection

Any selected entities on invisible layers are now deselected.