Orcina news

Windows 8.1 reached the end of mainstream support on January 9, 2018, and will reach end of extended support on January 10, 2023.

OrcaFlex 11.3 will be released towards the end of 2022 and this will be the last release of OrcaFlex that supports Windows 8.1. Future releases of OrcaFlex, after 11.3, will support Windows 10 and later.

We have just released Distributed OrcaFlex 6.2a which you can download from the Distributed OrcaFlex web page.

This is a relatively minor update containing the following changes:

• Previously, when submitting jobs, you specified whether you wanted both statics and dynamics to be performed, or just statics. Starting in OrcaFlex 11.1 the input data specifies whether statics and/or dynamics are to be performed. Because this setting has been moved into the model data, it is no longer possible to make this choice when submitting jobs in Distributed OrcaFlex. However, it is sometimes useful to be able to skip dynamics even if it is enabled in the input data. A new skip dynamics option has been added to the submit job dialog which mirrors the identically named option on the OrcaFlex batch processing form.
• The console program (dofcmd.exe) can now list jobs in both yaml and csv format. Previously only csv format was available.
• Jobs with post calculation actions would sometimes be restarted by the server if the post calculation action spent too long processing without sending a progress update. This release fixes that issue, but also requires that the Python OrcFxAPI module is updated.

Note that if you wish to take advantage of the improved handling of long-running post calculation actions, then you will need to update your Python OrcFxAPI module. This would happen normally by an OrcaFlex update, and the next minor release (11.2d) will include the required changes. In the meantime if you need to update then you can do so from the PyPI repository using this command:

pip install –ignore-installed –no-deps OrcFxAPI

Support for Python 2 ended at the start of 2020. OrcaFlex has continued to support Python 2 in the releases that we have made since then, but future releases of OrcaFlex will not support Python 2. This means that 11.2 will be the final version of OrcaFlex with support for Python 2.

This means that scripts using the Python interface to OrcaFlex, external functions, post-calculation actions and user-defined results will all require Python 3 from the next release of OrcaFlex. The minimum supported version of Python will be Python 3.6.

We have just released a minor upgrade to OrcaFlex, version 11.2c. Version 11.2c fixes a number of bugs. Full details of the changes are described in the documentation. Note that there are no changes to OrcaWave in this release.

We recommend that all users of 11.2 upgrade to 11.2c.

To upgrade to OrcaFlex 11.2c from any previous version, download the install program from your company’s Orcina software download page. A link to this page was sent to your software administration contact when we released 11.2a. If you do not have access to this page, please contact us.

We have just released a minor upgrade to OrcaFlex, version 11.2b. Version 11.2b introduces some minor new functionality and fixes a number of bugs. Full details of the changes are described in the documentation:

• OrcaFlex
• OrcaWave

We recommend that all users of 11.2 upgrade to 11.2b.

To upgrade to OrcaFlex 11.2b from any previous version, download the install program from your company’s Orcina software download page. A link to this page was sent to your software administration contact when we released 11.2a. If you do not have access to this page, please contact us.

We have now finished our series of OrcaFlex 11.2 user group meetings! These were once again held online, which provided an opportunity for many people to participate who may otherwise have not been able to get to an in-person event. Of the nearly 500 people who attended over the four meetings, we had 26 countries represented, including some less frequently visited places such as Greece, Hungary and Ukraine!

We were very encouraged by the level of attendance and hope that you found the sessions helpful and informative.

If you weren’t able to attend, the recordings are now available to view online, either via our YouTube channel or the videos page of our website. Please do forward links to any of your colleagues who you feel may be interested.

Thanks again for your continued support!

We have just released a minor upgrade to OrcaFlex, version 11.1e. Version 11.1e introduces some new functionality and fixes a number of bugs. Full details of the changes are described in the documentation.

We recommend that all users of 11.1 upgrade to 11.1e.

To upgrade to OrcaFlex 11.1e from any previous version, download the install program from your company’s Orcina software download page. A link to this page was sent to your software administration contact when we released 11.1a. If you do not have access to this page, please contact us.

Update: videos of the meetings are now available.

Following the release of OrcaFlex 11.2, we can now announce our OrcaFlex 11.2 user group meetings. Once again we are running these as virtual webinars.

These webinars will cover all the new features introduced in version 11.2 of OrcaFlex and OrcaWave. We will split the content into two separate webinars, one for OrcaFlex and one for OrcaWave. We will deliver each one of these two webinars twice in the same day, so hopefully most users can attend.

We anticipate that each webinar will be around one hour in duration, and attendees will be able to ask questions. Recordings of the webinars will be available on our website.

We are running the webinars over Zoom. You will need to register for whichever webinars you wish to attend, using the links below. Zoom webinars can be attended using the Zoom client, or directly from the browser if you do not have the Zoom client.

We learnt with our 11.1 UGM series that there are pros and cons to having these meetings as webinars, but we felt that overall the meetings worked very well online. In particular it was pleasing to receive so many questions during each webinar, and to see many attendees from geographical locations which we would not normally visit.

We look forward to catching up with our regular user group attendees, and hopefully some first timers too!

OrcaFlex new features

This webinar will introduce all the new features in OrcaFlex 11.2.

OrcaWave new features

This webinar will introduce the new features in OrcaWave, our diffraction analysis program.

We are very pleased to announce the release of OrcaFlex version 11.2. The software was finalised and built on 22^nd November. All clients with up-to-date MUS contracts will receive, in the week starting 29^th November, an e-mail with instructions on how to download the new version.

Version 11.2 introduces much new functionality, including:

• Seabed resistance modelling
• Turbine shear centre offset
• Turbine drivetrain flexibility
• OrcaWave restart analysis, variation models and change tracking
• OrcaWave Morison elements and stochastic drag linearisation
• OrcaWave decomposed panel results
• OrcaWave body data origins
• OrcaWave connections
• Vessel inertia compensation
• Extended Wavefront .obj support

These are the most significant developments, in our opinion. As always there are more enhancements that are not listed here. All new features are fully documented in the what’s new topics:

• OrcaFlex
• OrcaWave

Continue reading “OrcaFlex 11.2 released”

We have just released a minor upgrade to OrcaFlex, version 11.1d. Version 11.1d introduces some new functionality and fixes a number of bugs. Full details of the changes are described in the documentation:

• OrcaFlex
• OrcaWave

For OrcaFlex users, in addition to a number of bug fixes, version 11.1d now offers support for SHEAR7 version 4.11. For OrcaWave users, the multithreading bug fixed in this release could potentially have had a serious impact.

We recommend that all users of 11.1 upgrade to 11.1d.

To upgrade to OrcaFlex 11.1d from any previous version, download the install program from your company’s Orcina software download page. A link to this page was sent to your software administration contact when we released 11.1a. If you do not have access to this page, please contact us.