What's new in ChemProject 7.3.0.0
Apr 29, 2024
- NEW: The synthesis tree now features a compact view option, which keeps the step nodes collapsed unless expanded manually. The step operations still remain accessible from the operation sequence control below the reaction sketch area. This provides a superior overview in projects containing many steps and unit operations.
- Enhanced: The sketch editor now can be cancelled using the ESC key.
- Enhanced: Consistent behavior when attempting to leave the operation materials table in the presence of an invalid material entry.
- HOTFIX: Leaving the operation materials table in the presence of an incomplete material entry (amount, unit and/or name missing) could lead to lock and crash situations.
- FIX: No material entry was enforced for materials consuming operations (single empty material line did pass).
- FIX: Removed the now obsolete ELN Import… button in the edit step dialog, since the supported Espresso ELN application was discontinued.
New in ChemProject 7.2.0.0 (Apr 29, 2024)
- NEW: ChemProject now features Auto-Save, a new core functionality continuously saving work in progress without user interaction.
- Enhanced: Documents section: Now any number of references to the same source document are allowed. This is useful for referencing e.g. a specific material safety sheet within multiple step documents.
- Enhanced: Documents section: When the duplicate of a document already existing in the documents collection is added, the user is informed when its last save date is different from the existing reference, and the addition can be cancelled if desired.
- Enhanced: Documents section: The detail info of a selected document now displays the last modification date in the current regional date format. Small file sizes now are displayed as KB values, instead of fractional MB values.
- Enhanced: Empty material lines in the operation materials table are no more cleaned up by the application, e.g. when switching between operations or saving, providing a more consistent user experience. Reports, however, will exclude empty material lines.
- Enhanced: The save operation is no more blocked by embedded documents being edited (locked) by an external application. Instead, their most recent save state is embedded when saving.
- Enhanced: In the Operation Results report, the operation materials summary line now is visually better distinguished from the materials list .
- Enhanced: The operation time control now has a more fluent interaction behavior and prevents more than 2 digits for the minutes part.
- Enhanced: The operation times summary now has an improved selection behavior and scrolls to the first missing operation time when in issue report mode.
- Enhanced: It is now possible to save projects in demo mode (the limitation of 3 steps per branch still applies).
- FIX: Documents section: After deleting a step in the Source section, it remained visible in the Documents section.
- FIX: Documents section: After in-place editing of a document, its properties were not updated in the document info panel. Its properties now even are updated when the external application saves the edited document.
- FIX: Documents section: The document group control displayed a scroll bar instead of wrapping to the next line when many documents were present .
- FIX: The project file size did not decrease when the last reference of an embedded document was deleted.
- FIX: The missing densities dialog data now only can be applied if all pending densities are assigned.
- FIX: After creating a new synthesis from a branch (Export Branch), the synthesis final amount of the original synthesis was modified.
- FIX: The New Step dialog no more allows values lower than 2 for the molecular weight boxes of reactant and product.
New in ChemProject 7.1.0.0 (Oct 24, 2022)
- Enhanced: An animated label in the application toolbar now provides feedback on the Save and Save As actions. – Also, the Save action now is accessible via the CTRL-S keyboard shortcut.
- Enhanced: Now a confirmation dialog appears when the user attempts to delete a unit operation.
- FIX: After changing a material unit from a weight unit to equivalents ‘eq’, no molecular weight was requested, resulting in follow-up errors.
- FIX: Given the volume transfer chain A -> B -> C, when the amount of the source material A was changed to another value, it was only propagated to B, but no more further downstream.
- FIX: Leaving a materials consuming unit operation containing only transferred volumes but no added material was not prevented, which led to follow-up errors.
- FIX: The last empty material line in a material consuming unit operation was not consistently removed when leaving the operation.
- FIX: The materials property area to the right to the materials table now is disabled when the current material does not yet contain any data.
New in ChemProject 6.5.1.0 (Jun 7, 2021)
- HOTFIX: The application became unresponsive when the last operation of a step was of operation-only type (e.g. distillation) and contained a transferred volume from the previous operation, and then a materials consuming operation was appended.
- FIX: When leaving the application or before opening a new project, the user often was asked to save changes, although no changes occurred.
- Enhanced: Added an installer option to choose if a desktop shortcut should be created.
- Modified: Operation details dialog: Operator costs per h are no more removed when the number of operators is set to unspecified.
New in ChemProject 6.5.0.0 (Mar 15, 2021)
- NEW: The 'Runs per Step' tool now displays the currently assigned and the calculated sequence of runs per step of each step for better overview. The calculated runs of the volume limiting operation now can be propagated upstream, downstream and to all operations of the step, for each step individually
- NEW: The layout of the main section headers, the dropdown buttons, and the application header were redesigned.
- NEW: Comparison Section: The contents of the comparison table now can be copied to the clipboard and exported as CSV file, e.g. suited for use in Excel.
- FIX: A system error occurred when attempting to delete the first step of a branch.
- FIX: Under some circumstances a "TLS/SSL" error occurred when the application tried to confirm the license on the license server.
- FIX: A system error occurred when trying to import a corrupt Excel file into a price list.
New in ChemProject 6.4.0.0 (Aug 31, 2020)
- NEW: The operating costs per hour so far could be specified as an overall value only. Now they also can be specified as a combination of the number of required operators, their individual hourly costs and the equipment occupancy cost:
- Above dialog opens when clicking the Costs/h text field in the Operating panel (below) of the 'Source' section. After returning from above dialog, this panel reflects the specified data. See help for more details.
- The new 'Resources' report was added to the 'Reports' section. It contains calculated equipment occupancy times, overall operator hours and the overall operating costs.
- Enhanced: The material summary reports now also can be sorted by amounts (in addition to 'by name' and 'by costs').
- CHANGE: The specified runs per step now influence the overall operating costs (these now are multiplied by the number of runs).
- FIX: When assigning a material as transfer volume into a non-materials consuming operation (e.g. a distillation) with an already assigned volume transfer percentage, then the transferred material was not further passed to the next operation.
- A system error occurred when an existing value of transfer vol % was deleted.
- ChemBytes Draw: When saving a reaction sketch as .jpg or .png image, the 'auto-create' button was visible below the reaction arrow.
New in ChemProject 6.3.2.0 (Apr 2, 2019)
- NEW: Now also steps other than the first and last one of a branch can be deleted, allowing to adapt the project to situations where steps were telescoped. Since deleting an in-sequence steps effectively creates a new telescoped step describing a different reaction, ChemProject takes provisions to avoid resulting inconsistencies (help topic).
- FIX: Branch names longer than 31 characters caused a system error when exporting some reports to Excel. New branch names now are limited to 31 characters, existing ones are shortened in Excel exports if too long.
- FIX: Step Property dialog: Small reaction sketches were magnified to fill the available area. Now they retain the same magnification as in the main interface.
- Enhanced: Replaced the column title "Source" by "CatalogNr" (material table, price list editor) to emphasize its identifier role. It was often not well understood that it is this field which is the unique material identifier, not the material name.
New in ChemProject 6.3.1.0 (Sep 7, 2018)
- NEW: Added the new Operation Volume Intensity (OVI) analysis type for the assessment of the volume efficiency of single unit operations. This metrics represents the required unit operation volume per kg step product, and appears in the "Results" section (Detail Results report) as well as in the "Chart Analysis" section (Operation Details).
- NEW: A price reduction applied to a single material in the materials table now also can be propagated to all other identical materials within the same project.
- Enhanced: The step operations drop down menu of the 'Runs per Step' dialog now also contains the required volumes of the individual operations.
- Fix: Materials deleted using the DEL key re-appeared in the project after saving and reopening it.
- Fix: The 'Runs per Step' dialog now appears and updates instantly.
- Fix: There was a typo in the 'Chart Analysis' tab title text.
New in ChemProject 5.0 SP 2 (Jun 7, 2013)
- Fix: Clicking a treeview item or a 2D-chart element in the Yield Impact analysis resulted in a (recoverable) system error.
- Fix: After the Welcome screen disappears, the application now is immediately responsive.
- Enhanced: Upgraded from Microsoft ReportViewer 2010 to ReportViewer 2012.
- Enhanced: Report exports in MS Office format now occur in the .docx and .xlsx formats (instead of legacy .doc and .xls).
- Enhanced: The installer as well as the application now are signed by a digital certificate, providing compliance with security standards and essentially eliminating false download warnings.
- Enhanced: New, more consistent installer; on Windows 8 and most Windows 7 systems, no more external component downloads are required.
- Enhanced: Successfully tested for compatibility with Windows 8.
- Enhanced: New HID tool: Replaces the previous DOS window by a standard dialog allowing copying of the hardware-ID; upgraded to Windows 8 compatibility.
New in ChemProject 5.0 SP 1 (Jun 7, 2013)
- Operating Times Fix: Whenever a minute value of >= 30 minutes was entered for a unit operation time, then the corresponding hour value was increased by one, due to a display rounding error (internally, the value was stored correctly).
New in ChemProject 5.0 (Jun 7, 2013)
- Waste streams: Material disposal/recycling costs often approach or even exceed their acquisition costs. Therefore the disposal assessment is essential for a comprehensive synthesis analysis. ChemProject now offers comprehensive support for this functionality. More ...
- New report layouts & interface: The prior Crystal Reports engine was replaced by the much less bloated Windows Reports engine. All reports were re-designed from scratch, resulting in improved content and a fresher look & feel. At the same time the reports user interface was redesigned to provide centralized access to all report options from one place.
- Unit operations & runs per step: Operating cost calculations so far assumed one run per step towards the desired synthesis final product amount. Since in practice often more than one run per step is required towards this goal, the number of runs now can be assigned to each unit operation, either calculated or custom, affecting the operating cost results. To assist this, the "runs per step" section now can synchronize its calculation results with the synthesis.
- Residue transfers: All or a fraction of the transferred volumes within a a non-materials consuming operation (e.g. a distillation) now can be transferred into the next unit operation. This allows e.g. the transfer of a partially evaporated residue. This closes a gap in the previous volume transfer chain design.
- Native Charts: The third party chart control utilized so far now became part of the .NET framework. In order to avoid unnecessary overhead and to allow compatibility with future .NET releases, the code therefore was rewritten to utilize this built-in functionality. There should be only minimal changes visible to the user, e.g. the more vivid colors which were applied to the 3D analysis charts as well as to the comparison chart.
- Update notifications: ChemProject now automatically checks for available service packs or upgrades. The notification text is based on the type of update (service pack, upgrade) and provides information based on your current license type, along with an info-link. Update checks can be disabled for current versions; manual checks are available in the Extras menu.
- Thousands separators: To improve the readability of large numbers, all user interface elements and reports were revisited to implement the thousands separator for displayed result values. The format of the separator depends on your current localization settings.
- Faster recalculations: There's no more small delay after changing a material amount in the materials table and then moving to the next table cell.
- Faster installation: Due to the much smaller report component now utilized, its automatic download and installation time is reduced by about a factor of 10. The .NET Framework 4.0 Client Profile, the other required component, now is part of the Windows Update service and therefore should already be present on recently updated machines.
- Stable hardware-IDs: In the past, few customers experienced problems related to seemingly 'fluctuating' hardware-ID's, which invalidated their licenses at unpredictable intervals. The source of this issue was tracked (network adapter ID), and the generated hardware-IDs now exclude this parameter.
- 64 Bit compatibility: ChemProject is now compatible with Windows 7 32 and 64 bit (most likely also with Windows Vista 64 bit, but not tested).
- Upgrade to NET Framework 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010: The source code was adapted to these latest Windows runtime and development components to ensure future compatibility and access to the latest technologies.
- Strong-Named assembly: The application assembly now is strong-named (i.e. digitally signed) for unique identification by the system.
New in ChemProject 4.0 SP 5 (Jun 7, 2013)
- Application launch time now is reduced by a factor of 2.
New in ChemProject 4.0 (Jun 7, 2013)
- Licensing system: Introduced new & flexible software protection/licensing system via licensing file.
New in ChemProject 4.0 Beta (Jun 7, 2013)
- Document store: (Documents tab). Allows the embedded storage of documents on the synthesis-, branch- and step-level, where they further can be arranged in groups . Such groups can easily be created and modified by the user. All documents can be annotated and synchronized with their originals. The documents are compressed and stored within the project file, resulting in one single portable file.
- The number of runs per step functionality (Step Analysis tab -> Runs Per Step button) allows the determination of the production runs per step, based on the required and the actually available unit operation volumes.
- Batch Print/Export: This functionality supports the printing and/or exporting of multiple reports by the click of one button.
- Default Operating Costs per Hour: If the yearly overall costs of a production unit is known, average operating costs per hour can be derived and used as a basis for calculations. This allows, simple, yet quite accurate assessments of operating costs, without the need to know technical details.
- Price List Change Highlighting: Introduced change highlighting, which allows highlighting current changes, additions and stored changes within the price lists. This not only supports the workflow of price list administrators, but also helps to make changes transparent to the user community.
- Temporary Price Lists: Introduced the temporary price lists category, which allows price lists administrators to work with isolated price lists (draft workspace) and to store them while still containing any number of missing or erroneous data.
- Ubiquitous Help File Links: All major application functionalities now contain a help file link, leading directly to the corresponding page in the help file documentation.
- New, compressed file format: In order to allow efficient document embedding, a new, compressed file format has been implemented. Thus, without embedded documents the same project file now is ca. 15 times smaller than before. ChemProject still can read the previous file format but will store such files in the new format. To make the files available to previous application versions, they can be converted to the legacy format.
New in ChemProject 3.1 (Jun 7, 2013)
- Extended material search functionality: The wildcard "*" character can be used as the first character in the type-ahead functionality (in material popup and price list). Thus, typing *brom returns all materials containing "brom" anywhere in their name.
- Each first step of a side branch now can be assigned an arbitrary step number; i.e. it does not need to start with number 1 any more.
- Project materials list: An alphabetically ordered list of all materials used in the synthesis now is available for material location analysis.
- Add new branch/step/unit operation: These actions now can be undone while the specification of their first unit operation material still is incomplete (before, it needed to be completed first, before the added element could be deleted).
- Volume handling: Now all materials of a unit operation can be defined as transfer volumes at once, or reset back to non-transferred at once.
- Reports: The synthesis, branch and step summary reports now can be displayed either ordered by material name or by by costs.
- Previous application version user settings now are transferred into the new version when upgrading.
- The DELETE key now can be used for deleting materials from the materials table.
- 3D-analysis section: A branch selection popup now is available.
- The material location analysis settings (selected branch and material) now are independent from the other 3D-analysis settings.
- When inserting a unit operation into an existing volume transfer chain, the transfer chain is broken as before, but the transfer materials of the previous unit operation now are transferred into the inserted unit operation (their transfer attribute was reset in earlier versions).
- When a new price list is opened, the user is not asked any more for confirmation of opening it next time the program starts - it will do so automatically
New in ChemProject 3.0 (Jun 7, 2013)
- Introduced button for disconnecting additional price list.
- Equivalents now allowed as unit for imported materials.
- Introduced branch/step navigator on top of synthesis tree
- The operation source report now contains the MW of the last branch product
- Progress window during first initialization of reports introduced