This is a minor update release for Pathfinder 2009.

New features:

• Added a tolerance to room extraction that prevented accidental room "bleed" due to small openings. Openings less than 1 inch wide are now considered closed.

Bug fixes:

• Fixed a bug that could cause occupants to become stuck due to a mismatch between a moving sphere test and a (more accurate) moving cylinder test. Now the moving cylinder test is used in both locations.
• Improved mesh generation to prevent a bug that would cause occupatnts to become stuck when they incorrectly attempted to move through a space that was too narrow.
• Fixed a bug that could cause rooms that should be connected to actually be disconnected.

This is an update release for Pathfinder 2009.

New features:

• It is now possible to import PSM files created by PyroSim 2010.
• The automated floor extraction feature now executes much faster and uses less memory.
• When adding occupants using the Uniform placement option, Pathfinder will now rotate the placement grid into alignment with the selected geometry. This makes it possible to fit the maximum number of occupants into tight, angled spaces such as stadium rows.
• Improved text rendering in the 3D results when using the horizontal floor layout.
• Error messages generated while opening or importing files are now more descriptive.
• The simulation dialog now shows the name of the current file.
• Improved the performance of the debug visualization - the trail will only be drawn for the currently selected occupant.
• Improved performance for models with complex mesh geometry (large numbers of faces).
• Improved contrast between extracted geometry and imported geometry.
• The imported geometry and navigation geometry filters will no longer override the visibility state of explicitly shown or hidden geometry.
• The floor extraction tool will now select generated geometry when finished.
• In the 3D results, changed the default agent view from disks to cylinders.

Bug fixes:

• Added a circular dependency check that prevents occupants from becoming stuck when waiting on occupants that were ultimately waiting on the original occupant.
• Fixed a crash that could occur when changing the Z-location while drawing a new room.
• Fixed several bugs that could cause simulations to become stuck when using single-step stairs.
• Fixed a crash that occurred when drawing a thin wall that started or ended at a stair.
• The cursor will longer "jump" when switching between the Roam and Orbit view modes.
• Fixed a bug that caused agents to get stuck on a spiral staircase example.
• Fixed a bug that caused some DXF imports to fail.
• Fixed a bug that caused Pathfinder to crash when reading a file that contained multiple subgroups in the active floor.
• Pathfinder will no longer incorrectly identify occupants as "stuck" during the initial delay phase.

Pathfinder commercial release.

This release includes the following 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.

Thank you very much to our beta testers who helped identify these issues.

This release fixes a few additional issues related to "entanglements" between the Pathfinder and PyroSim installers. Duplicate GUIDs were preventing some installed resources from being removed when uninstalling - if PyroSim had also been installed on the system. Now, when uninstalling, Start Menu items will be correctly removed.

Also, videos can now be recorded in the WMV format. This format can be more reliably replayed on windows systems and encoders come built-in with windows.

This release fixes an installer bug in Pathfinder 2009.1 RC1. The installer shared an MSI "Upgrade Code" with PyroSim. As a result, the Pathfinder 2009.1 RC1 install will corrupt any existing PyroSim 2008 installs. Also, attempting to re-install PyroSim 2008 will fail until Pathfinder 2009 is removed.

We have fixed the Pathfinder upgrade code and future installs of Pathfinder will not interfere with PyroSim. If your PyroSim installation has been damaged by Pathfinder 2009 RC1, you can restore both PyroSim and Pathfinder to working condition by following these steps:

1. Uninstall Pathfinder 2009.1 RC1
2. Install the latest version of PyroSim. For a link to the PyroSim download page, please email support@thunderheadeng.com
3. Install Pathfinder 2009.1 RC2

Removing PyroSim or Pathfinder will not remove existing software license files. Previous versions of Pathfinder are not affected by this bug.

This release is the first release candidate for the full commercial version of Pathfinder. It contains the following improvements over the previous release:

• The Users Guide, Example Guide, and Technical Reference have been updated.
• Fixed a bug that could cause the velocity of an agent to exceed the maximum.
• Fixed a bug that caused the max speed to ignore the stairway modifier when inertia was turned off.
• Adding occupants to stairways will no longer cause the occupants to be placed in invalid locations.
• The simulation clock will now be shown in 3D results screen shots and videos.
• 3D results will no longer crash when encoding movies with the xvid codec.
• Re-arranged the Create Movie dialog. Clicking OK will now make the movie.
• Added 2D time history plots for occupant counts and door flow rates.
• By default, CSV output will now be generated at 1 second intervals (down from 5 second intervals).
• The Show All Floors option has been moved to the Floor box.
• Renamed "Overlay Navigation Mesh" to "Show Mesh Triangles"
• In the 3D Results, paths are now shown using the occupants' color.
• The 3D Results now streams input to allow visualization of very large results files.
• Changed the install location of some DLLs to fix a launch error for the 3D results.
• One or more 3D occupant models can now be selected for individuals or profiles.
• Changed installer technology - the installer now uses Microsoft's install system.
• Fixed a file name problem that prevented the simulation clock from showing in the 3D Results.
• Improved the conflict resolution model to allow occupant counter-flow in steering mode.
• Model design problems that cause mesh topology errors will now cause a warning to be displayed before running the simulation.
• It is now possible to make the simulation mesh transparent in the 2D design view. This makes it easier to remove internal mesh pieces for furniture, etc.
• Substantially reduced the memory requirements of the 3D results program.
• Pathfinder will no longer crash when traversing into a new folder in the File/Save dialog.
• Added a Set Z action that allows you to move multiple rooms to the same Z-location.
• Occupants will now have the correct orientation for the first time step of steering mode simulations.
• Dxf import images and background images can now be shown in the 3D results.
• Snap grids can now be disabled in the 2D view.
• In the 3D results, occupants can now be selected.
• A "Remaining (Total)" column has been added to the CSV results. Occupants that fail to exit are no longer counted in the exit totals.
• Improved mouse selection for occupants.
• The Edit Profiles dialog now shows values using the selected unit system.
• The bounding box for the current selection is now shown in the properties panel.
• It is now easier to modify door widths and possible to modify stair widths.
• Pathfinder and the 3D Results will now launch when double-clicking PTH and output files.
• Improved the way Pathfinder remembers the selected unit system.

Known Issues:

• When using SFPE mode with collisions enabled, times can vary substantially from the pure SFPE mode. This is caused by several factors: in rooms where density is causing very slow walking speeds, occupants may not queue up quickly enough to be limited by the door queue release speed. In congested conditions, occupants may be pushed back through doors and have to wait on the queue again. SFPE mode occupants with collisions enabled, corner more slowly that pure SFPE mode occupants.
• Occupants do not attempts to optimize door queues when exiting rooms. This can lead to artificially slow results when using certain geometric features (e.g. divided doors). The current workaround is to merge divided exits.
• In some cases of very dense initial crowding, the initial delay feature can cause agents to artificially "stack" or queue. This happens when there is very little space between two occupants, and the delayed occupant is interposed directly between another occupant and it's current way point.
• In some cases, when turning, occupants do not utilize the full width of doors or hallways.
• Running a simulation does not cause the properties panel to commit changes. Users must press enter of change the focus to get properties changes to "stick" prior to running a simulation. This can be confusing when modifying a single property between simulation runs.

Other notes:

• In terms of execution time, SFPE mode simulations are much faster than Steering mode simulations or SFPE simulations with collisions enabled.
• In terms of calculated exit times, steering mode simulations tend to give faster times than SFPE mode simulations. SFPE mode simulations with collisions enabled tend to give the slowest exit times.
• To prevent simulations from getting stuck, collisions are sometimes permitted. If an occupant is the nearest occupant to a way point, that occupant is allowed to press through other occupants. Also, when collisions are enabled for the SFPE mode, occupants moving toward different exits or occupants whose initial delay has not yet elapsed are omitted from the collision handling algorithms.

This release addresses a few issues reported against the previous Beta update and adds some new 3D human models. Additional documentation will now be accessible via the start menu.

Bug fixes and new features in this version include:

• Walls added using the Add a Thin Wall tool will now be added to the simulation.
• The 3D Results now uses a more diverse, business-like set of 3D models.
• A console window will no longer be displayed when running Pathfinder.
• The Start Menu link for 3D Results is fixed.
• Hardware skinning in 3D Results has been fixed - previously the lib/shaders folder was missing from the installation.
• The Technical Reference and Users Guide have been added to the installation.
• Pathfinder will now show an error dialog when old PSM files cannot be loaded.

This release is an update to the Pathfinder public beta. This new version addresses many of the issues users reported with occupants becoming stuck and enables geometry import for PyroSim models.

Other bug fixes and new features in this version include:

• All known problems that cause occupants to become "stuck" during the simulation have been eliminated.
• Geometry from PyroSim (PSM) files can now be imported in addition to FDS input files. A thin floor obstruction is now automatically added to the base (min Z) of appropriate meshes in an imported FDS or PSM file.
• The automatic floor extraction tool has been updated to recognize angled walls (e.g. 3D DXF files and PyroSim models) and provide a point-and-click interface. To extract a room using the new tool, select the "ext" tool, and click a floor. The tool will search outward from the point to find a complete room.
• Geometry for floors, doors, and stairways can now be edited via the mouse or keyboard.
• The path occupants use to approach corners is now calculated using a spline. This improves cornering motion by allowing occupants to properly align their bodies prior to the turn.
• The waypoint seeking and wall avoidance algorithms have been updated to improve occupants' ability to navigate narrow spaces.
• The split tool has been renamed "Add a thin Wall" and can now be used to add "thin" walls to rooms in addition to splitting rooms.
• Fixed a bug that caused the simulation to crash when occupants have a non-zero initial delay.
• The case name and simulator mode now appear in the simulation summary file.
• Fixed a bug in the simulation summary file that caused occupants to be counted as flowing through a door when they were rejected from the destination room by density limits.
• The simulation summary file will now correctly update the "exited" count for reactive steering simulations.
• The simulation summary file now shows the average flow (pers/sec) for each door during the time that door was in use.
• Fixed a bug with snap grid initialization when using English (EN) units.
• Boundaries are now drawn for rooms, stairways, and thick doors.
• License management is now available within the Pathfinder UI.