APSIM5.2 release notes
23rd October 2006
APSIM user interface
Extra field validation has been added to many areas including, clock, met file and soil. Also more drop down lists of valid options have been added instead of the user entering free text which would often causes errors when running the simulation due to spelling mistakes.
Soil and met charts have been updated to give more useful information and the units have been corrected.
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This table show the relative speed and memory performance improvements of this version compared to last two APSIM releases. This data came from running the 50 year Continuous Wheat Simulation template.
Infrastructure
Even more APSIM infrastructure is CMP (Common Modelling Protocol) compliant.
APSIM wheat model
refinement of the yield and grain protein algorithms has been undertaken. Results of this recent testing on a wide range of datasets are now available on the APSIM web site.
Bug resulting in very high grain protein concentrations has been identified and fixed.
Five new cultivars have been added.
Many architectural changes to generic plant module.
APSIM solute model
Diffusion of solutes within the soil water filled pore space can now be incorporated into simulations. See the solute module documentation for examples.
APSIM / unix
APSIM and the command line tools (conTosim, APSRun) now compile and run under linux (x86), thanks to the work of pioneer etcetc.. Documentstion will appear later.
APSIM5.1 release notes
21st June 2006
APSoil
APSoil and the soil form in the APSIM User interface has undergone numerous changes:
Texture column added in the Soil Profile tab - will import and export this to/from spreadsheet.
The "Check soils" button will now check all soils under the currently selected node in the tree rather than all soils.
If you modify DUL, then the PAWC columns are now auto updated.
You can export part of a database to a spreadsheet with path info. NB: Path info is now part of the "Name" column in the spreadsheet rather than a separate column.
Export some soils to see what I mean.
If you double click on a APSRU-????.soils file, APSoil will now check the security and ask for a password if necessary. Didn't before.
Some bugs dealing with importing from some .par files have been fixed. e.g. TAB characters are now tolerated.
Can now add and delete soil layers directly in APSoil - this fixes Anthony's problem.
InitWater and InitNitrogen sometimes crashed APSoil after importing from a .par file and spreadsheet
Two decimal places is now supported for SWCON
When importing values from EXCEL, the precision of those numbers is truncated to what the user sees in the APSOIL grid. Previously, APSoil was hiding unwanted precision which was causing APSIM problems.
Apsim user interface
Look and feel has changed slightly to improve usability.
The variables grid now handles a blank module name. e.g. you can specify that you want 'sw' as an output but don't need to provide a source module name for the variable.
The "Shared" mechanism whereby you can share components between paddocks or simulations now works properly.
The simulation tree no longer repeatedly expands itself when the user drags or modifies something.
Updated sowing rules in the UI now allow users to select a crop growth stage.
Climate change component now works properly.
Font size in Logic and Rule boxes has been increased for readability.
Added an Operations component.
Added an Erosion component.
New manager rules have been added: "Lucerne ley fixed sow harvest at flowering" and "Lucerne ley variable sow harvest at flowering"
You can now have an if statement on the very first line of a logic component. Previously this would stop APSIM running.
APSIM Report
New components: ChartLine, Depth, Frequency, RecFilter and updated (more consistent) macros
Plant
A defect whereby PLANT would leak P has been fixed.
The protein output has been fixed to be a percent.
Prevent phenology being wound back to stage 3 which initialises plant parts\
Operatns
Now handles dates in the form dd/mm/yyyy or dd-mmm as well as the older year and day number.
Butterfly pea
This is a new module for APSIM. It is still under development and not recommended for general use.
Infrastructure
The APSIM infrastructure is now more CMP (Common Modelling Protocol) compliant meaning that APSIM modules now stand a much better chance of running in CSIRO Plant Industry's FARMWI$E grazing framework and visa versa.
APSIM5.0 release notes
17th March 2006
APSFront
APSFront has now been removed from the APSIM release and it's development has discontinued. It is recommended that all users migrate to the APSIM user interface. Introductory training workshops are held every six months and show how to use the new user interface to create and run simulations. Alternatively, the same exercises and material can be accessed at http://www.apsim.info/apsim/Training/Index.htm. These exercises are self paced and assume no knowledge of the APSIM user interface.
Sorghum
A new Sorghum module makes it's debut in this release. No changes are required to the control / parameter files to use this new module.
Run-time speed.
Some work has been done on APSIM to improve it's runtime speed. While APSIM 5 is almost twice as quick as the previous version 4.2, the chart below shows that there is still much to be done to improve APSIM's speed.
This chart shows the amount of time, in seconds, that it took for APSIM to run a 50 year continuous wheat simulation on the same hardware i.e. the changes to runtime speed are due to software and not improved hardware speed over the years.
Apsim user interface
Support for complex rotations has been added, similar to the way APSFront did rotations.
Grid cell handling has been improved so that cut/copy/paste/delete works in the same way as Microsoft Excel.
A new memo/comment facility has been added so that users can add comments to their simulation.
A new tracker capability has been added so that APSIM variables can be summarised e.g. average weekly/monthly rainfall, runoff etc.
A new erosion capability has been added.
Increased stability and a new look.
Apsoil
Improved soil importing and exporting to and from spreadsheet and .par files has been implemented.
A new look keeping it in line with the Apsim user interface has been added.
Screen
The screen module no longer exists. All control files will be automatically modified to remove the reference to screen. e.g. lines like the following will be deleted.
module = screen test.par [screen]