OOF Newsletter #12 (June 2005)

Dear Colleagues --

A new release of OOF2, version 2.0 beta 5, is now available at

  http://www.ctcms.nist.gov/oof/oof2.html

This version fixes a number of bugs, including one that produced
incorrect results in systems with a non-zero T0 in thermal expansion.
Thanks to Steve Harris for pointing out the error.

The Property hierarchy has been reorganized and rationalized.
Elasticity is a now a subcategory of Mechanical, which also includes
ForceDensity (eg, gravity).  Thermal Conductivity and HeatSource are
subcategories of Thermal.  A new Couplings category includes
ThermalExpansion and PiezoElectricity.

The reorganization of the Property hierarchy will *break* old scripts
and data files.  The program 'b42after.py' will convert scripts and
ascii data files from the format used by beta 4 to the format used by
beta 5.  It's available from

  http://www.ctcms.nist.gov/oof/b42after.html

If you have binary data files to convert, load them into OOF2 2.0 beta
4, save them as *ascii* data files, and run b42after.py on the ascii
files.

A complete list of changes is available at 

  http://www.ctcms.nist.gov/oof/oof2changes.html

There is now an additional option for downloading and installing
OOF2, using the Python distutils commands instead of the Unix
configure and make commands.  This method should be simpler and more
robust, and we encourage everybody to try it out. The old method,
using configure and make, is still available, but it may be removed in
future versions.

As always, please report any problems you encounter with installing or
running OOF2 to
    oof_bugs@ctcms.nist.gov
For more details, see the "Bug Reports" section of the OOF2 web page.
Thank you to everyone who has submitted bug reports.

Suggestions for future additions to OOF2 are always welcome.

Sincerely, 
   The OOF2 team,
       Steve Langer
       Andrew Reid
       Seung-Ill Haan
       R. Edwin Garcia
       oof_manager@ctcms.nist.gov