GEM4D Version 1.8.2.0 is compiled with the Microsoft .NET Framework Version 4.5.2, as the previous version used is not supported by Microsoft any longer. This unfortunately means that Windows XP is no longer supported, and I hope not many users are affected by the transition. GEM4D is advanced visualisation software, which will always require reasonably up-to-date hard and software.
This GEM4D version fixes three long-standing annoyances:
Occasional scene blackouts that required a left-click of the mouse in the scene to redraw the content.
Occasional "sticky mouse" rotations of the objects in the scene, that required a left-click of the mouse to disengage the rotation.
Countries that use a decimal comma instead of a decimal point (Brazil, France, Norway, Finland), had to change their Windows Culture settings when using GEM4D.
A 32-bit version of GEM4D is again available on the website, as still used by some.
New functionality
Rewrote some sections for the data-grid functionality to improve the performance when working with large data-sets.
Nearly all mine design software formats coordinate information as "Easting, Northing, Elevation" except Surpac, which uses a "Northing, Easting, Elevation". GEM4D now automatically swap the Easting and Northing columns when loading Surpac-files. To change the coordinate system after loading a file, right click on the file name in the right panel, and select "Change coordinate system" from the context menu.
Number of allowed simultaneous clipping lines with "Right panel => Clipping => Type and widget => Lines - Number" was increased from 200 to 1 000.
Changes
"Top toolbar => Toolbox 2 => Extract mesh boundary and edges" now extract the boundary and edges as separate objects.
Change the spline stiffness scale of "Top toolbar => Toolbox 2 => Split lines into fixed lengths" from (0.0 to 1.0) to (0 to 10) - see "Discussion: Changing line vertices".
Remove the "Ribbon => Mesh => Safe DXF-files => Old coords" checkbox as redundant.
Bug fixes
Occasional scene blackouts that required a left-click of the mouse in the scene to redraw the content - fixed.
Occasional "sticky mouse" rotations of the objects in the scene, that required a left-click of the mouse to disengage the rotation - fixed.
Countries that use a decimal comma instead of a decimal point (Brazil, France, Norway, Finland), had to change their Windows Culture settings to use GEM4D - fixed.
When adding blank data-grid rows, the the existing data shunted 1 column to the right - fixed.
Removing data columns from the grid with "Left panel => Marker => Data-grid => Right mouse click context menu => Delete selected column" did not update the column name prefix values - fixed.
Some calculations in "Ribbon => Mapping => Mapping filters => Manual => Failure settings" were broken in the previous version - fixed.
Adding data rows "Left panel => Marker => Data-grid => Right mouse click context menu => Add blank grid rows" with empty data-grids caused GEM4D to crash - fixed.
GEM4D crashed when selecting "Ribbon => Image => Image actions => Add text" and then picking on anything other than an image object - fixed.
Discussion: Changing line vertices
Selecting 10 creates a perfectly inflexible spline that will select the new line vertices exactly on the original string. Any other value will allow flex in the line and will not be exactly on top of the original line. Smaller values allow for more flex in the spline curve.
