Version 3.6 - 12th April 2018
Version 3.6 of AstroGrav is an upgrade containing a major enhancement to the evolution commands, together with many other improvements and bug fixes. This information is intended for existing users who are already familiar with AstroGrav and want to quickly find out about the main changes. This is a free upgrade for customers who have already purchased a license, so that all you need to do is download Version 3.6 and use it in place of your old version. If you have any problems with this new version, please don't hesitate to contact us so that we can help you out.
Version 3.6 of AstroGrav has the following new and improved features.
Evolving To Events
Version 3.6 of AstroGrav includes a major enhancement to the Evolve / Evolve To... command that allows evolution to any of the following events in solar system simulations.
- The next or previous opposition of any chosen object.
- The next or previous conjunction of any chosen object.
- The next or previous quadrature of any chosen object.
- The next or previous transit of any chosen object.
- The next or previous minimum elongation of any chosen object.
- The next or previous maximum elongation of any chosen object.
- The next or previous minimum distance of any chosen object.
- The next or previous maximum distance of any chosen object.
Importing Objects
The Edit / Import Objects... command reads data from web addresses at the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center that have recently changed. As a result, earlier versions of AstroGrav are now unable to read this data, and the import tables appear empty. Version 3.6 of AstroGrav fixes this problem, and also includes the following improvements to the importing of asteroids and comets.
- In the event that no data is found when attempting to refresh an import table, AstroGrav now reverts to the cached table, rather than overwriting the cached table with an empty table.
- The Near-Earth descriptive popup has been corrected in the Category boxes of asteroid and comet import tables.
Help Menu Improvements
Version 3.6 of AstroGrav includes the following additions to the Help menu.
- A new Help / AstroGrav Facebook command has been added that takes your default browser to the Facebook page that is associated with AstroGrav.
- A new Help / Email Support command has been added that creates a new email in your default email client that is addressed to the AstroGrav support service.
Other Improvements
Version 3.6 of AstroGrav also has many other minor improvements and bug fixes, including the following.
- The Tools / Create Movie... command has been improved to show hundredths of a second in the display of the movie time.
- Various simulation settings (such as the last sought object) are now saved along with a simulation so that they appear as defaults the next time the simulation is used.
- The umlauted character in Boötes has been corrected so that it now displays correctly.
- The notes of the sample simulations have been corrected so that accented characters now display correctly.
- Windows are no longer unnecessarily reordered before displaying save or exit/quit confirmation dialogs.
- Several performance improvements have been made, significantly speeding up some operations.