Published on 26/04/2013 11:15
The latest release of SANDS provides users with a variety of new tools, features and improvements. Users with a valid support and maintenance contract can upgrade their professional licences to the latest version of the software for FREE! Visit the
downloads section on our
website to upgrade today.
Alternatively, the latest version of
SANDS Free can be downloaded at no cost. SANDS Free is a restricted version of
SANDS Professional, which can be used for commercial purposes at no cost!
New features and tools available within SANDS v7.1 include:
Photos – Photo paths can now be stored relative to the current database’s project folder (as defined in the SANDS database configuration file). This is to facilitate the easy moving of databases between systems with different folder structures.
Photo list – Now shows a thumbnail of the image and the GPS data if it is present in the jpeg file.
Beach Profile inspection – Complete re-design of the beach profile printing/reporting. New print options control what is printed, options are Show Parameters, Show Data and Show Photos and a new option to save the output directly to PDF.
Coastal Process Unit – Beach Profiles – added option to show the beach levels on the profile graphs.
Coastal Process Unit – Beach Profiles – added option to hide the master and/or design profiles on the profile graphs.
Coastal Process Unit – added option to invert the legend order so that the legend shows the latest survey set at the top of the legend.
Coastal Process Unit – added option to include all profiles in the envelope, by default only the visible profiles are included in the envelope.
Coastal Process Unit – added option to show the comment codes for the latest survey set’s profile.
Coastal Process Unit – added functionality to combine all the profile graphs images into a single report for all locations in the process unit and directly save the report to PDF.
Coastal Process Unit – added functionality to combine all trend graphs images into a single report, for all locations in the process unit and directly save the report to PDF.
Coastal Process Unit – added functionality to combine all change graphs images into a single report, for the selected survey set in the process unit and directly save the report to PDF.
NFCDD Defence Asset Inspection – added a header section showing the user data for the asset’s location, reference, alternative reference, type, description, comments, maintainer, grid reference and a list of asset elements.
NFCDD Defence Asset Inspection – added Photos list view to the inspection form which shows a list of photo thumbnails associated with the current survey.
Added Sea Defence Database for displaying the historic data imported from the Northumberland Sea Defence Access Databases and from NFCDD Asset Element Inspections, this is only populated as part of specific project.
Text/Diary Inspection – added Photos list view to the inspection form which shows a list of photo thumbnails associated with the current survey.
Wave Roses – Added option to plot offshore wave roses against peak direction where data is available.
Wave Scatter Plot – Added ‘Hs v Tz’ series to the scatter diagram.
Beach Recycle Logs – Added an option to easily add multiple profile locations to the log.
Beach Recycle Logs –Added option to add an end date to indicate that the recycling works occurred over a period of time.
Cross-Sectional Trend graphs – now also shows Beach Recycle Logs as several vertical lines on the graph even if the average cross-sectional area is defined as zero. If an end date is specified for the log a vertical band is shown from the log’s start date to the end date.
Profile Editor – added the location’s easting and northing columns to the locations lists so that they can be sorted by either columns.
Profile Editor – added functionality to re-calculate profile chainages along the profile bearing. The chainages are calculated as the distance for each profile point’s easting and northing from the profile location’s coordinates and re-projected on to the profile line. The Re-calculation can be applied to either all profiles for selected locations or for individual selected profile surveys.
Profile Editor – added option to copy selected profile form one location to another.
Maps – Measuring tool greatly enhanced to show the length of multi-point line strings.
Other enhancements include:
3D Profile Extract Tool – added option to define a start chainage so that data which is behind the profile origin (i.e. negative chainages) can be incorporated in the profile extraction.
CCO Meteorological Data Import – updated to store the rainfall data from the import file.
Data Available Summary – added summary for rainfall data in update.
Import EA Profile – added checks to warn the user if coordinates of the zero chainage point, for the profile being imported, does not match the coordinates for the profile location. If this is the case then the chainages of the imported file may be incorrect.
XYZ Profile Import – added option to import the feature code if a fourth column is present in the input file.
Published on 06/12/2012 15:06
Thank you to everybody that attended the SANDS user conference on Tuesday 27th November in Swindon. Once again, the conference was a great success with a mixture or existing users of SANDS and new SANDS Free users in attendance.
Attendees had the opportunity to listen to a number of speakers, including Nathan Sykes (Coastal Process Scientist at Plymouth Coastal Observatory) who discussed how SANDS is used for annual reporting an Dan Sargent (East Sussex Partnership and Strategic Overview Team at the Environment Agency) who discussed how he has used SANDS for outfall design.
Various presentations from the conference can be downloaded or viewed on the user community website. The website also provides instant access to manuals, forums, FAQ's and much more.
During the conference, we received a number of suggestions for future development ideas. If you would like to help drive the development of SANDS, please spend five minutes completing our questionnaire.
We would also be keen to capture any other ideas on improvements and the Ideas Lab provides an easy way to share your views with the SANDS community
If you would like to contribute to the 2013 SANDS User Conference by presenting a case study on how you have used the software, please contact Mike Stickley on +44 (0)1793 812 479.
Published on 25/07/2012 15:38
The latest release of SANDS provides users with a variety of
new tools, features and improvements. Users with a valid support and
maintenance contract can upgrade their professional licences to the latest
version of the software for FREE! Visit the downloads section on our website to
upgrade today.
Alternatively, the
latest version of SANDS Free can be downloaded at no cost. SANDS Free is a
restricted version of SANDS Professional, which can be used for commercial
purposes at no cost!
New features and
tools available within SANDS v7.0 include:
New in SANDS v7.0
New Cliff Profile Inspection –
Added a new inspection type which enable the input and viewing of near
vertical, vertical or overhanging cliff profiles.
CCO Cliff Profile Import – Added option to import
cliff profiles, for use only on beaches that have near vertical, vertical or
overhanging cliffs. The cliff profile import format is similar to the CCO
Profile format but will require an ‘index’ column that defines the order of the
consecutive points from the top of the cliff down to the foreshore. The
Filename must be in the format MNGUNT_YYYYMMDDcp.txt, which is used to derive
the date of the survey and suffix ‘cp’ is for ‘cliff profile’.
New Cliff Profile Analysis Tool – Added a new tool to
analyse the cross-sectional area for near vertical, vertical or overhanging
cliffs.
This analysis is accessed via the 'Beach Profiles' / 'Cliff
Analysis Tool...' menu, from the top menu bar.
SANDS can be used to calculate different scenarios of cross
sectional area for a cliff profile in relation to multiple master profiles.
For the cliff analysis cross-sectional area calculation, the
master profile must be set up with both horizontal and vertical components
which form an 'L' shape. The cross sectional area that is calculated will
relate to the area above the horizontal section and to the right of the
vertical section of the master profile.
In an ideal case, the cliff profile crosses both the
vertical and horizontal sections of the master profile the following image
shows the area calculated in yellow.
When a cliff profile does not cross the vertical section of
the master profile, the area calculated is cut off horizontally back to the
vertical section of the master profile at the level of the first point of the
cliff profile. Also when a cliff profile does not cross the horizontal section
of the master profile, the area calculated is cut off vertically down to the horizontal section of the master
profile at the chainage of the last point of the cliff profile.
If the cliff profile rises above the maximum level of the
master profile then the area calculation will be cut-off horizontally at the
maximum level of the master profile.
This is also the case if the cliff profile extends beyond
the master profile horizontally, the area will be cut off vertically at the
maximum chainage of the master profile.
It is worth noting that if no master profile is set for the
location, SANDS will assume a constant default level of –20m and will form an L
from a point at the maximum height and minimum chainage of the cliff profile,
then a point straight down to -20m and then out to the maximum chainage of the
cliff profile at -20m.
For example, if a user wanted to compare the area of several
surveys, each of differing lengths and height, it would be possible to set the
master profile to include only the common areas of these surveys.
When the areas have been calculated SANDS will plot the
areas of the various surveys against time. This plot will also provide an
insight into cliff area trends over time.
Added Coastal Groynes Register
All Profile Chart Exports – Added Chart Export
Options, under the main options menu, for defining the resolution of all
profile charts exported to jpeg. This has a ‘use for all charts’ so the defined
resolution can be switched on or off.
Location List – Added an action menu (right mouse
click) for easy access to the data associated with the selected location.
Published on 27/01/2012 13:13
All Shoreline Management Plans (SMPs) for England and Wales (status final or draft as of 31/08/2011) have been combined and are now available in a single SANDS database.
The SMP Policy Database provides the capability of visualising the SMP policy units and linking of SMP data and policy statement documents geospatially. Each SMP is represented as a layer in SANDS. Each SMP layer holds the geospatial representation of each individual policy units with an additional SMP Buffer layer showing the colour banding representing policy for the three epochs: short term (0-20 years), medium term (20-50 years) and long term (50-100 years). Each epoch is represented by five different categories, which are colour coded for the values of ‘Hold the Line’ (HTL), Managed Realignment with localised Hold The Line (MR/HTL), ‘Managed Realignment’ (MR), ‘No Active Intervention’ (NAI) and ‘Advance the Line’ (ATL). This enables the user to quickly view SMP policies for an area and access the policy statements for individual units by clicking on the line or banding and opening the associated document from the document links menu.
Note that the policy lines or bands on the map show the preferred shoreline management policy for each period and do not represent either the shoreline or defence locations.
To view the SMP information on the map, click on the SANDS map button. This will show the SMP Buffer Layer for all the SMP Policy Units contained in the database. The SMP Buffer layer will be displayed as set of three polygons representing the three epochs defined in the SMP Policy. To view this information:
- Hovering the mouse over the buffer will show a hint window detailing the Location Name(Policy Unit), the PU number and each of the three epochs.
- At a less detailed scale each section will be labelled with the extent of the Policy Unit, along with the PU number.
- By zooming in on a Policy Unit the labels will also include the SMP policy for each of the three epochs.
- Right clicking on a Policy Unit line will bring up a menu. Selecting SMP Policy Summary will bring up all the information for that PU.
- Clicking on the Document links, eight via the popup menu or the Documents area (bottom left of screen), will open the SMP policy Statement at the specific page for the selected policy.
To open the SMP Policy Database select “SMP” from the main menu bar, then select SMP Policy Database from the drop-down menu. The SMP Policy Database Editor enables the data for the SMP policy unit to be entered/edited and linked to the respective policy statement document and page no (only if document is a .pdf).
When all of the data and links have been filled it is possible to view a summary of the information by selecting the Policy Unit you are interested in and clicking on the “Open selected SMP Policy Summary” button at the bottom left-hand side of the SMP page. From the page that opens up it will be possible to open the linked documents using the “Policy Unit Statement” and “Action Plan” buttons.
Example of a SMP Policy Statement opened in SANDS:
NOTE: SANDS can open any linked PDF document as a form within SANDS if Adobe Reader v7.0 or later is installed. This option can be turned off by unchecking the ‘Open PDF Documents in SANDS’ button on the Options menu, SANDS will then open any PDFs externally in Adobe Reader or any other PDF viewer software registered on the users system.
The SMP Policy Database is available for
download (1.69GB) and contains the database and all associated GIS and SMP Policy Statements; extract the zip to a new folder of your choice alongside your existing SANDS Databases.
You will need to add a new alias to the configuration file which points to the SMP Policy Database. When in SANDS, select the new alias from the Database List in SANDS. Please note that you will need to have SANDS v6.6 Professional or Viewer installed to use the SMP Policy Database.
Published on 18/10/2011 17:03
The release of SANDS v6.5 includes the launch of SANDS Free, a restricted
version of SANDS Professional, which can be used for commercial purposes at no
cost!
Halcrow has developed SANDS Free so that it enables you to confidently apply
it to smaller projects and to tackle different types of coastal management
scenarios, and then seamlessly move to SANDS Professional should your project
grow beyond the restrictions of the software.
To download SANDS Free, click here.
SANDS Free cannot be used to enter and analyse more than 10 profile
locations, 1 coastal process unit, 5,000 time series records per location, 5
additional GIS layers and 50 diary entries. SANDS Free can only be used locally
on a single database. SANDS Free does not include the life cycle cost module or
the SMP policy database. The NFCDD, FCRM, wave transformation or data
acquisition capabilities are also not included.
