SuperBeam 2012 changes

Release 4.58g, 23 Dec 2012

• A note is added to steel beam calculations where the beam comprises two or three sections and no other notes have been added. The note reads 'Sections to be bolted together with tube spacers or suitable alternative connections at max 1.5m c/s'. This is a one-off procedure: the standard text will not be reinserted if you delete or edit it.
• If you selected 'Usual user' in the User Initials dialog your initials were printed with a question mark in front of them - fixed
• A few small presentational improvements have been made to the calculation printouts

Release 4.58f, 26 Nov 2012

• Internal PDF generation now uses QuickPDF code library (was Gnostice).
• Bug fixed which allowed beam load edit page splitter bar to be moved so as to obscure load table
• Bug fixed which stopped the first item in the Project Manager list being copied and pasted
• BM and SF line thicknesses in beam BM/SF diagrams are now separately definable for the current printer and for internally generated PDFs
• Effective lengths: if you enter an actual length, 'm.' is now added to make it clear that this is a physical length, not a factor
• Sundry small improvements to user interface and printouts

Release 4.58e, 1 Nov 2012

1. The B/F button on the beam load edit dialog didn't work - fixed.
2. An updated third-party code library used in 4.58d caused the values of some spin edits to be set to zero and they could not then be changed. Key affected fields: Beam Load Edit dialog: timber E-value and steel/timber bearings bearing plate thicknesses; Column Edit dialog: column length above and all baseplate dimensions; Page Settings: line widths - fixed.

Release 4.58d, 24 Oct 2012

(There is no 4.58c)

• Beam notes: You can now add notes to appear at the end of the basic beam calculation (i.e. before the steel calculation).
• Improved printing options: The Print dialog now lets you select the printer (if more than one installed) from a drop-down list. On the PDF page checking a box displays a PDF Settings dialog in which you can optionally select PDF files whose content will be merged before/after the SuperBeam-generated content.
• New Miscellaneous, Merge PDFs option: This lets you combine a number of PDF files into one file.
• User interface: User interface enhancements include additional colour choices (separate blend from/to colours for hint and flash message windows)
• Calculator: If you changed the calculator VAT rate it wasn't saved - fixed

Release 4.58b, Aug 2012

One small fix:

• for flitch beams the long term (allowing for creep) deflection factor was shown incorrectly (e.g. for a 4m span if the instantaneous deflection was 0.003L (12mm) and the creep factor 1.1, the final deflection was correctly shown as 13.2mm (12.0x1.1) but incorrectly labelled as 0.0027L not 0.0033L)

Release 4.58a, 10 Jun 2012

Several small changes:

• The 0.01 version number change is because this release is built with Delphi XE2 - this is a technical change that does not affect end users
• In 4.57j we changed the steel designation from the BS449 Grade 43/50 to S275/S355, not realising that some of our non-UK users work in places where the BS449 designations are still used. To accommodate them we have added an extra setting in Configuration, User Preferences that lets you select how steel grades are described. There are four options, for S275 they are S275, Grade 43, S275 (Grade 43) or Grade 43 (S275) (likewise for S355).
• The ratio calculations for steel columns with moments have been expanded for clarity

Release 4.57j, 22 Apr 2012

There is no 4.57i

Several small changes:

• The steel grade is now primarily shown as S275/S355 instead of the BS449 Grade 43/50
• On the Bearings pages of the Beam Edit dialog if the bearing type was none and you pressed the full editor button you could add bearing notes but these were not printed and lost on saving. Now if you do this, the bearing type is automatically changed to User Defined and the notes are handled correctly.
• If you entered additional moment(s) on a steel column and then deleted them, they continued to be shown on the calculation sheet until the project was saved and reloaded (a workaround was to enter a moment of '0' rather than just deleting the entry).
• Lower case 'l' for column and timber post effective lengths now uppercased (previously was ignored so effective length 1.0l was taken as 1.0)
• Until now all PDF files produced by ProSteel's inbuilt PDF generator have been secure, i.e. they could not be modified. This protection is now optional.

Release 4.57h, Feb 2012

Several small fixes:

• On the Beam Edit dialog Timber page the Add and Use Note buttons were the wrong way round.
• Wrong time was printed on page heading if hour < 10
• Help, About now includes an additional section that explains the link between activation keys and update availability