Partner Software Release Notes

See the end of this file for links to releases previous to this one.

Release 3.7.11

Overview

There are lots of exciting features requested by our customers in the release, which we were shown off at the 2006 Partner User's Conference. Among the features included are:

• Survey Location:

A new feature called Survey Location has been added to the Field Designer which allows the user to add new locations relative to existing locations. There are several methods available which are based on either deflection angles and distances or map coordinates.

• Navigate Locations:

Within the Edit Location menu, there is a new feature which allows the user to select and view any existing location from a picklist. Locations are sorted by their assigned location number.

• Convert to Location:

A new feature has been added which allows the user to covert stations to locations. After being converted, the new locations behave exactly like normal locations.

• Offset Line

Partner now has the ability to perform offset staking from existing line/road on the map. This feature is located under "Data" tab and allows the user to input offset feet and indicate linetype.

• Trimble Support

The Field Designer now supports Trimble GPS receivers and Trimble post-processing. Stakers can stake a job in the field, and then correct the locations using Pathfinder Office.

This release branched from the development trunk on 9/5/2006.

Note: we are doing a hotfix 3.7.11 roll on 12/21/2006 to fix a staking sheet printing bug.

General

• (1/11/2007 Russell) Added UTMZone15NorthNAD27 to list of projections.
• (6/23/2006 Thrane) Added Maps/resources/legends/ to zip files created by ZipUpConfig and ZipAndUploadConfig.
• (8/15/2006 Paul) Reverted experimental hsqldb.jar to older version from release branch due to speed problems with newer version.

Field Designer

• (12/21/2006 Russell) Turned off line clipping (Feature added 8/25/2006) which caused staking sheet printing problems.
• (10/18/2006 Russell) Make the GPS dot go away when you lose your GPS signal.
• (10/18/2006 Russell) Downgraded the "No GPS reading to zoom to!" message from a warning to an entry, making it less intrusive.
• (10/18/2006 Russell) In the data pane, took out the scrollbars around every tab because it was causing problems with the Find item tab. Instead, only the Job, Design and Redline tabs have scrollbars.
• (10/16/2006 Russell) Ignore 0/0 GPS readings in the Field Designer, Map Viewer, and Redline.
• (10/16/2006 Russell) GPS redlining now plots a point immediately instead of getting hung up in the Auto-Update Granularity setting.
• (9/5/2006 Jaim) Enabled the distance and the angle fields. They were disabled for user input to select angle format but now it is enabled.
• (9/5/2006 Jaim) Set defaults for method, linetype, and options picklists per Bill's request.
• (9/1/2006 Russell) Added Staking Buddy importer for Pocket PC.
• (9/1/2006 Russell) Show post-processing actions in the Field Designer all the time, not just when a Trimble GPS is configured.
• (9/1/2006 Russell) Fixed HDOP and PDOP in the CollectTrimbleDialog.
• (9/1/2006 Russell) Added breadcrumbs to track down the Trimble lose-the-Bluetooth-signal-and-it-locks-up bug.
• (8/28/2006 Russell) Fixed a bug in the Trimble stuff where PDOP was mistakenly returning the HDOP value.
• (8/28/2006 Russell) Added breadcrumbs to track down the Trimble lose-the-Bluetooth-signal-and-it-locks-up bug.
• (8/25/2006 Jaim) Fixed old span length bug.
• (8/25/2006 Russell) Added clipping to formatted lines. This fixes a bug where the machine locks up if it's drawing huge, million-foot lines.
• (8/25/2006 Jaim) Fixed Follow Road action so it doesn't interfere with Trimble's Correct Points.
• (8/25/2006 Russell) Fixed HDOP, PDOP and Satelite display bugs in the Trimble status displays.
• (8/17/2006 Jaim) Fixed the NaN bug that was causing the "Offset Line" feature to draw weird lines. It should be working properly.
• (8/17/2006 Jaim) Changed the "Survey Location" gui behavior a bit. Previously you could not click anywhere but the survey location window. Now, you can pan/zoom and do any other FieldDesigner functionality while the survey location is up.
• (8/17/2006 Jaim) Turned off the "Coordinates" feature in survey location for now. Thinking that user can (and, most likely will) enter coordinates that do not make sense and corrupt the whole job. Without ample error checking, this feature is a ticking time bomb. Will revisit this later.
• (8/16/2006 Jaim) "Survey Location": Now in FieldDesigner we have the ability to add locations by typing in distance and angle. An initial location must be highlighted for this feature to work. "Survey Location" button launches a gui that has several options of angle format, linetype selection, and options of creating a new location, copy an existing location, and inserting a template.
• (8/16/2006 Jaim) "Offset Line": Partner now has the ability to perform offset staking from existing line/road on the map. This feature is located under "Data" tab and allows the user to input offset feet and indicate linetype.
• (8/16/2006 Jaim) "Convert to Location": I have added a button to convert a station into a partner location. The station needs to be highlighted first.
• (8/16/2006 Jaim) "Location Navigation": Added a picklist under "Edit Location" window where user can navigate from one location to other locations without having to get out of edit location window. This picklist consists the construction ids of all the locations in the job and selecting will load that location.
• (8/16/2006 Jaim) "Front Deflection Angle Display": Now, you will be able to see the front deflection angle of a location. This will help users selecting assemblies etc. This is just a display but needs to be made sure that its showing correctly.
• (8/15/2006 Russell) Fixed a bug where the FD would crash on certain kinds of difficult to reproduce errors in the Trimble stuff.
• (7/21/2006 Russell) Made the text on the CollectTrimbleDialog very, very large.
• (7/19/2006 Russell) Changed "Add GPS Location" and "Move GPS Location". They used to collect GPS points for a hard-coded 3 seconds, but now the user controls how long they collect points and how many points they collect.
• (7/19/2006 Russell) Fixed a bug in Guppy where if a file was locked on the server or the client it would hang the Guppy conversation. This change could affect the Hub and the Field Designer.
• (7/17/2006 Russell) Added an error message if Partner Trimble hasn't been installed.
• (7/17/2006 Russell) Took out excessive logging in TrimbleDaemon.
• (7/13/2006 Russell) Changed Trimble propagation. Before, all Trimble files propagated from the Field Designer to the Hub. Now, SSF files, the data that gets postprocessed, gets copied from the Field Designer to the Hub, and the CSV, the postprocessed data, gets copied from the Hub to the Field Designer.
• (7/13/2006 Russell) Added an error message if Partner Trimble hasn't been installed.
• (7/13/2006 Russell) Added an error message if the Pathfinder Office Export hasn't been set up right.
• (7/11/2006 Russell) Added getNumberOfPositionsInFeature() to TrimbleDaemon.exe.
• (7/11/2006 Russell) Made the GPS Status Window always on top.
• (7/12/2006 Russell) Fixed a bug in TrimbleDaemon.get*Files() where it was crashing when the Trimble or the Export directories weren't there.
• (7/10/2006 Russell) Problem with using wrong version of Java.
• (7/10/2006 Russell) Satellite info doesn't work with a real GPS, so commented it out.
• (7/6/2006 Paul)Added two new script hooks to the field designer. BeforePrint is run right after the user presses the print button. AfterPrint is run just before the web browser is launched. Both have the variables "gui" and "job". FieldDesigner/config/partner/BeforePrint.py FieldDesigner/config/partner/AfterPrint.py
• (7/6/2006 Russell) Moved GPSStatusPanel from gui to apps.MapBrowser because of JarMake dependency problems.
• (7/6/2006 Russell) New TrimbleDaemon.exe.
• (7/5/2006 Russell) Zoom to GPS no longer zooms when the GPS has lost satellite fix.
• (7/5/2006 Russell) Added the GPS status popup window to the Field Designer.
• (6/30/2006 Paul) support for pre-checkin script at FieldDesigner/config/partner/BeforeCheckin.py
• (6/30/2006 Russell) In GPSSettings, changed the COM port field from a dropdown to a text field. Bluetooth drivers create virtual COM ports as high as COM40, which would make the dropdown too long.
• (6/29/2006 Paul) fixed bug in SQLScripter that was causing a StackOverflowError on SQL hub interfaces.
• (6/29/2006 Russell) Added a warning message to the "Create Existing Location" in the Field Designer. This was the original way to collect GPS locations, but this way does not collect postprocessing data. Field Designer warns the user and cancels the action.
• (6/15/2006 Russell) Merged with the sandbox/russell branch. This adds Trimble support through TrimbleDaemon.exe instead of through the Java Native Interface. It also includes the meters-to-feet conversion fixes.
• (6/12/2006 Russell) Fixed several incorrect meters-to-feet conversion factors scattered thoughout the code. We now use a constant defined in ProjectionLib, and we now use US Survey Feet everywhere. This could change the following parts of the Partner system:
  • In the Map Browser and Field Designer, the GPS dot.
  • The Ops Manager putting ops data on the map.
  • Reprojecting jobs.
  • In the Palm Map Viewer, the GPS dot.
• (6/12/2006 Russell) Trimble integration is ready for testing.
• (5/17/2006 Russell) Fixed a bug where Field Designer jobs weren't closing because of the Trimble stuff.
• (5/16/2006 Russell) Only starts the Trimble thread if Trimble support is turned on in GPSSettings.tof, because the Trimble thread was popping up error messages about missing DLL's on Windows 2000.
• (5/15/2006 Russell) Merged with the sandbox/russell branch.
• (5/15/2006 Russell) The TrimbleDaemon thread is initialized on every application with a splash screen. This shouldn't be a problem, but it needs to be tested.
• (5/15/2006 Russell) The GPS code has changed considerably. We need to test NMEA GPS, following the GPS on the map, and staking with the GPS in the staker.
• (5/15/2006 Russell) I added new fields to GPSSettings.tof, so we will have a bunch of old GPSSettings.tof files with missing values. The defaults shouldn't break an existing NMEA configuration.
• (5/10/2006 Russell) More Trimble touch-ups -- position logging to find a bug.
• (5/9/2006 Russell) Added Trimble settings to the GPS Config ctron.
• (5/5/2006 Russell) Tested and fixed the Hub support for Trimble files.
• (5/3/2006 Russell) Added working Trimble support. The Field Designer has a new action, Correct Locations, there is a new native library, PartnerWin32.dll, and there is an installer, Platform/resources/PartnerTrimbleSetup.msi, to install the Trimble ActiveX components and the ATL runtime library.

  Jobs can now write SSF files as they are staked. Trimble-specific settings have been added to GPSSettings.tof to control this new behavior.

  Added "Add GPS" button to the design tab. This button adds a new Location at the current GPS position and, if the user is post-processing the job, adds a point to the SSF file.

• (5/1/2006 Paul) Modified Checkin process to move Trimble GPS files around. Files are stored in the Field Designer in FieldDesigner/data/Trimble/ and on the Hub in Hub/data/Trimble/. Three files are associated with each job; .ssf (original, uncorrected GPS), .cor (corrected GPS), and .csv (readable text version of corrected data). Only the SSF is copied to the hub; the others are generated by Pathfinder office and copied down when the job is checked out.
• (5/1/2006 Russell) Added the first pass at Trimble support. NMEA GPS support has several untested changes.

Map Translator

• (9/15/2006 Russell/Paul) Merged code from trunk - took some logging out of the Trimble stuff in the palm translator.
• (8/15/2006 Paul) Fix to fileSets behavior in FileSetFrontend of map translator.
• (8/15/2006 Paul) There is now a constructor for NamedPolygonSet that takes just the path; it defaults to readOnly=false. This means the original scripts will work the same way without modification.
• (8/10/2006 Paul) Fixed problem with empty or null FilesetFrontend fileSets parameter; now nulls are converted to an empty list. Be aware that an empty fileSets list will behave the same as a null - it will go through ALL file sets, whereas you might expect it to go through NO file sets.
• (7/24/2006 Paul) updated XMLGenerator.magik to support SmallWorld v4.
• (7/24/2006 Paul) Various changes to Arc frontend testing changes with how the translator deals with annotation tables. Watch for problems.
• (7/20/2006) Fixed support for specified fileSets in DXFFrontend and ShapefileFrontend in 4.0 viewer.
• (7/6/2006 Paul) support for dumps in Smallworld.
• (7/6/2006 Paul) Forgot to remove hack to ArcInfo frontend for WindMil non-feature data.

Partner Web

• (8/24/2006 Eric) Many changes:
• New feature: Automatic record counting (jobs, service orders, outages, whatever the module is keeping track of).
• The List Index now has a counts control, where you can specify the field to count (integers and picklists only) and a date field to range over (with before and after dates).
• This eliminates the need to import data into Excel or Access for most simple queries. Advanced counting is still best done via Access and an OBDC connection, but this goes a long way toward eliminating that need.
• Future updates will include a way to save count queries as well as (for the jobs module) counting across unit categories.
• Note: Existing clients getting this roll will need to change a bit of site configuration to keep the List Index formatting clean. Open MasterInstall/PartnerWeb/config/generic/4.0/PartnerWeb/templates/custom/jobs.tpl and delete the first two lines and the last four lines. Hand copy the file to the WorkingInstall is you don't want to bother with a full update.
• (8/23/2006 Eric) Picklists with a value of 0 were getting dropped by php, due to the whole 0=null issue I solved for integers back on 7/20/06. Now it's fixed for picklists too.
• (8/23/2006 Eric) Admins can now view the hub's copy of a job's .job file and the archived .job file from the reports folder. These links are located in the "Report" tab for each job.
• (8/23/2006 Eric) The "Partner Web Modules" page now has a link to view the Hub log.
• (8/22/2006 Eric) Admins can now view the hub's copy of a job's .job file and the archived .job file from the reports folder. These links are located in the "Report" tab for each job.
• (6/28/2006 Eric) Viewing the material tab while adding a new unit would give an SQL error. Locket tab to "Unit Info" and set id to zero.
• (6/22/2006 Eric) Revision 22: The data validation scripts were trying to validate floats as integers on form submit. This has been fixed.
• (8/25/2006 Eric) Added the ability to count unit categories across jobs (and to group them by unit category or an arbitrary header field) to the Jobs module.