Recent Posts

81

Announcements / NoiseMap Five 5.0.33

« Last post by roger on August 01, 2014, 06:01:24 PM »

NoiseMap Five version 5.0.33 was formally released on 30 July 2014.

Many minor usability issues have been addressed, including new context-sensitive help and User Manual.
The headline features are:

• Full Octave Band Calculations in SiteNoise;
• Full atmospheric absorption calculations;
• Full results explorers for noise contours and receiver results

Productivity improvements including:

• Construction schedules imported from spreadsheets;
• Information panel gives on-screen detail of displayed contour/receiver results;
• More built-in model checking features.

Other important improvements:

• Import of any NoiseMap Enterprise Masterfile or Archive File;
• Import of shapefiles produced in other software;
• All noise indices displayed and exported.

Earlier improvements include:

• Scenario Manager which lets you inspect, rename and hide scenarios
  
• Additional search terms have been added to the Find function.

NoiseMap can automatically check the model for errors when it is loaded.
This includes checking for

• duplicated objects, which can occur when roads, buildings, ground contours, etc are loaded from digital mapping
• receivers positioned within building outlines
  

RailNoise has had heavy testing recently and various small changes have been made to improve its usability.

NoiseMap has been tested on all current versions of Windows, including Windows 8.

82

Support / Re: Why do I get a message that barriers are ignored with loss of accuracy?

« Last post by roger on July 31, 2014, 02:47:43 PM »

Although your version of NoiseMap can store 4000 barriers in the model, it can only have up to 100 possible barriers between the receiver and a particular segment of road.  You have many small barriers which make up the outline of a building, and many of these buildings between the receiver and the segment of road.  The result is that there are more than 100 small lengths of barrier in the intervening space, which exceeds the processing capacity of your version of NoiseMap. 

You need to either reduce the number of barriers or get a newer version of NoiseMap.

83

Support / Re: Why do I get a message that barriers are ignored with loss of accuracy?

« Last post by roger on July 31, 2014, 02:41:56 PM »

The information on my version of NoiseMap Enterprise states that it can have 4000 barriers. I have far fewer than that, so why am I getting this error message?

84

Support / Converting remote database models to a flat-file (standalone) database model

« Last post by roger on July 31, 2014, 02:37:20 PM »

NoiseMap stores its models in a database. There are two systems for this - the remote system that uses a MySQL database engine, and the standalone system that uses SQLite.  SQLite is an 'embedded' database engine that communicates with an .nmdb file that contains the data. Because the database engine is integrated into NoiseMap and the nmdb file looks like any other Windows file, it does not require any special installation or management. However, there are some limitations, in particular it is not intended for access by more than one instance of NoiseMap at any one time.  This means that it is not suitable for multiple calculation computers undertaking the queued calculations used for massive processing tasks. This is much less of a consideration now that NoiseMap can do multi-core processing.

You can convert a backup (nmbackup) of a MySQL database to an SQLite database, using the NoiseMap backup and restore utility. A 'batch' file is available to automate the process.  Please contact NoiseMap if you would like a copy of this.

Please note that you cannot convert an nmdb file to an nmbackup file, so you cannot convert a standalone system to the remote system.  You should bear this in mind when deciding which format to use.

85

Hints and Tips / How do I make sure that my shapefile has all the columns I need?

« Last post by roger on July 23, 2014, 06:45:13 PM »

I am creating a shape file to import workings on a very large site.  I want import my own workings number for each working location, so that I can relate it to my activity spread sheet. How is this done?

Shapefiles can contain very many columns of information, some of which may be relevant to NoiseMap, and some may not be relevant.  NoiseMap allows you to 'map' the columns in your shapefile to the parameters needed by NoiseMap.  The user manual explains this, but if you would like to see an example of a shapefile, in this case for workings, you could create a very simple test model and then export it as a shapefile
[View>Export Shapefile]

You can then open the shapefile in a GIS or you can open the database part [.dbf] in Excel, where you can inspect the columns. There are two different shapefile formats, one for Fixed Workings and one for Mobile Workings. 

The column for the Workings ID is imported as 'All objects'> 'Editable Object ID'

86

Support / Re: Script for Calculating Selected Receivers

« Last post by roger on July 18, 2014, 04:06:31 PM »

Sorry, there is no command for selecting receivers and then doing Calculate>Selected Receivers.
You would have to create a child scenario in which you deleted all except the receivers of interest and then do calculate database receivers for that scenario.
Hope this helps, Roger

PS there is a command select receivers but it seems to select all the receivers.
The command calc receivers lets you choose a named area, etc but only stores results in the database.
If I can find out more, I will post here.

87

Support / Script for Calculating Selected Receivers

« Last post by ChrisC on July 15, 2014, 03:48:42 PM »

Hello

Is it possible to create a script for calculating selected receivers?

I have a model where i only want to calculate results for approx. 20 receivers - is it possible to do this without manually selecting each one?

Thanks,
Chris

88

Announcements / Operating systems supported by NoiseMap Five

« Last post by roger on July 15, 2014, 12:34:21 AM »

NoiseMap Five runs on all current versions of Windows, including XP, Vista, 7, 8 and 10.
This includes both 32- and 64-bit versions of the operating system. 

Due to changes made by Microsoft in Windows 10 to improve security, it has been necessary to change certain memory-management functions.  For this reason, we recommend that all users should upgrade to version 5.2.10, especially if they are using Windows 7 or 10.

Although NoiseMap looks like 32-bit code, many of its mathematical operations are 64 bit (known as double-precision) in nature in order to maintain the required processing accuracy.  Double-precision operations take many more clock cycles than simpler operations and make heavy demands on the CPU and maths co-processor.  This is why we now offer implementations of NoiseMap five that permit multi-core or multi-processor working, which will make full use of the power of a modern computer. 

If you are finding that processing time is an issue, ask us about upgrading to a multi-core version of NoiseMap five. 

89

Announcements / Progress since January 2014

« Last post by roger on July 15, 2014, 12:21:53 AM »

NoiseMap 5.1 (under the disguise of NoiseMap 5.0.30) has been in heavy use since January and has proved to be robust and reliable.  We have completely re-written the on-line Help and this new version is now being released.

We are now designing and implementing post-processing functions for the Receiver Results Explorer.  This will enable the assessment tables relating to changes of noise level and noise nuisance described in the Design Manual for Roads and Bridges to be created from within NoiseMap without the need for complex external GIS processing.

We are also preparing to put ISO 9613 soft (porous) ground processing into the SiteNoise module.  As part of this, we are looking at improved ways of representing ground cover in NoiseMap.

90

Support / Why do I get a message that barriers are ignored with loss of accuracy?

« Last post by roger on July 14, 2014, 11:51:00 PM »

When NoiseMap was first written, noise models were created by hand digitising and computers were slow, so one of the compromises was that we limited the number of barriers that would be considered in any part of the angle of view of a segment.  The original limit was 30 barriers - and when you could only have a total of 100 barriers in a model, that was fine.

But when you use automatic model creation, you can have tens of thousands of noise barriers, including building outline and ground contours, and this makes it much more likely that important screening effects could be overlooked if you only consider a small number of barriers in each part of the angle of view. 

So in Version 5.0.22, we added a Calculation Parameter that lets you select the maximum number of effective barriers in any part of the angle of view.  The highest number you can have is 5000, the Default value is 2000, but for backwards compatibility, you can set the maximum number of barriers to only 100. This is not recommended for general use, though.

The value you choose can affect the result.  If you find that you have improved the barrier screening but the noise level has not gone down (or it might even have gone up!) increase the limit on number of effective barriers.

Of course, if you are running NoiseMap Enterprise, you can't increase the limit, so perhaps it is time to upgrade to five?