release notes for granta mi version 8 - december 2014 8_re… · release notes for granta mi...

GRANTA MI™ Version 8

Release Notes for GRANTA MI Version 8.0

December 2014


© Granta Design 2014 page 2 of 24

GRANTA MI™ is the leading system for materials information management in engineering organizations. It enables you to control, analyze, and securely share critical corporate data on materials and processes, managing the materials information lifecycle.

www.grantadesign.com

© Granta Design 2014 All rights reserved

Cambridge Engineering Selector, CES Constructor, CES EduPack, CES INDEPTH, CES LAB, CES Selector, CES WEB, Eco Audit, Eco Materials Adviser, Granta Design, Granta Material Intelligence, Granta Material Inspiration, GRANTA MI, Hybrid Synthesizer, Material Intelligence—The Game, Materials Gateway, MaterialUniverse, MI:, ProcessUniverse, the GRANTA, GRANTA MI, GRANTA Material Intelligence, and GRANTA Material Inspiration logos, the Granta CES EduPack and Granta CES Selector logos are trademarks of Granta Design Ltd.

Adobe®, Adobe® PDF, and Acrobat® are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. HyperMesh is a registered trademark of Altair Engineering, Inc. ANSYS Workbench® is a trademark of ANSYS Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States or other countries. The ASM logo is a registered trademark of ASM International. Autodesk®, Autodesk Inventor®, and Moldflow are trademarks or registered trademarks of Autodesk Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States or other countries. CAMPUS® is a Registered trademark of CWFG mbH, Frankfurt am Main. CATIA®, ENOVIA®, SIMULIA®, SolidWorks®, and Abaqus/CAE® are registered trademarks of Dassault Systèmes or its subsidiaries in the United States or other countries. Google® is a registered trademark and Chrome™ is a trademark of Google Inc. ESDU is a registered trademark of Information Handling Services Inc. Microsoft®, Excel®, PowerPoint®, Internet Explorer®, SQL Server®, Windows®, and Windows Server® are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States or other countries. Mozilla® and Firefox® are registered trademarks of the Mozilla Foundation. NASTRAN is a registered trademark of the National Aeronautics Space Administration. Creo®, Pro/ENGINEER®, and Windchill® are registered trademarks of PTC or its subsidiaries in the United States or other countries. NX® and Teamcenter® are registered trademarks of Siemens Product Lifecycle Management Software or its subsidiaries in the United States or other countries. Prospector is a trademark or registered trademark of UL LLC.

Granta Design Ltd. makes reasonable efforts to explicitly acknowledge all trademarks cited in our literature or on our website. If you would like us to add or alter an acknowledgement, please contact us.

http://www.grantadesign.com/

http://www.grantadesign.com/contact/



Table of Contents

1 Introduction ................................................................................................................ 4

2 GRANTA MI System Overview .................................................................................... 5

3 Summary of Key Enhancements in Version 8 ............................................................. 7

4 What’s New?—Detailed Descriptions ...................................................................... 10

GRANTA MI:Explore ............................................................................................................ 10

GRANTA MI:BoM Analyzer .................................................................................................. 11 GRANTA MI:Server .............................................................................................................. 12 GRANTA MI:Viewer ............................................................................................................. 13 GRANTA MI:Admin .............................................................................................................. 14 GRANTA MI:Toolbox ............................................................................................................ 15

GRANTA MI:Service Layer ................................................................................................... 16 GRANTA MI:Server API ........................................................................................................ 16

5 Data products ........................................................................................................... 17

6 Documentation at this release ................................................................................. 19

7 Upgrading from previous versions of GRANTA MI ................................................... 21

Custom files ......................................................................................................................... 21

Search projects .................................................................................................................... 21 Upgrading your databases .................................................................................................. 21 New/updated Granta reference databases ........................................................................ 21 Reapplying changes to GRANTA MI configuration files after a software upgrade ............. 22

8 Known Issues ............................................................................................................ 23

FEA Exporters from older MI releases (Version 6 or earlier) .............................................. 23



1 Introduction GRANTA MI™ Version 8 from Granta Design Limited is the latest version of the leading materials information management software system for engineering enterprises. GRANTA MI meets the different and demanding needs of the materials experts, design teams, engineering analysts, environmental professionals, managers, data publishers, and other professionals who work with information related to metals, composites, ceramics, plastics, and other materials.

Granta is committed to maintaining GRANTA MI’s leading position. Regular releases deliver major new features and performance improvements, guided by input from our customers, while keeping pace with changing systems requirements. Between releases, a series of interim updates maintains a regular flow of minor enhancements and fixes based on customer feedback.

This document provides a brief overview of changes to the system modules since the previous release, Version 7, and provides information about some issues that may require attention when upgrading.

GRANTA MI Version 8 has been developed to meet the increasingly diverse needs of organizations seeking to apply their materials knowledge. It includes new tools, features, and data to help extend the reach of a company’s material knowledge, enabling it to be applied by more people, across more locations, and in support of more initiatives. Key features of the release include:

• GRANTA MI:Explore—an exciting new web app offering simple, intuitive access to relevant data.

• Next Generation Access Control—provides flexible control over who can access data. Easy to manage and integrate with existing authorization systems.

• New template technology—cuts the time required to make data import templates from hours to minutes.

• Many usability enhancements—including new support for large files, performance improvements in MI:Viewer and MI:Toolbox, charting enhancements.

To install GRANTA MI please follow the installation instructions available in the download. You will also need the alphanumeric key from your license agreement.

If you have any problems, questions or feedback, please contact us at Granta:

Email: [email protected]

Telephone: USA or Canada: 800 241 1546

UK: 01223 518895

France: 08 00 76 12 90

Germany: 0800 182 5026

Elsewhere: +44 1223 518895

Web: www.grantadesign.com

http://www.grantadesign.com/



2 GRANTA MI System Overview Core modules

• MI:Server—the core database system. Included with MI:Server is MI:Admin (a Windows® application for database schema construction and maintenance), MI:Server Manager (a Windows application for configuring the GRANTA MI installation), and other core technologies (e.g., the GRANTA MI Service Layer).

• MI:Toolbox—applications for import, export, or transformation of data.

User interfaces

• MI:Explore—new for Version 8, MI:Explore is an intuitive web app designed for exploring data relevant to a particular user. It is easily configured for specific user groups, providing a focused and easy to use interface for browsing the information stored in GRANTA MI.

• MI:Viewer—a rich web browser user interface, which enables browsing, searching, editing, management, and use of both corporate materials data and reference information via your browser.

• MI:Materials Gateway—a suite of modules enabling data and tools from GRANTA MI to be accessed within CAD, CAE, and PLM software. MI:Materials Gateway applications are now available for Abaqus/CAE®, ANSYS Workbench®, Autodesk Inventor®, CATIA®, Creo® and Pro/ENGINEER®, HyperMesh®, NX®, Teamcenter®, and Windchill®.

• MI:BoM Analyzer— new for Version 8, enables you to import and edit Bills of Materials ('BoMs') for products or product designs, or build new BoMs from scratch, then run reports that assess product risk and support better-informed design decisions.

Data management templates

• MI:Metals Template—a template database schema and homepage for managing metals data plus supporting import, export and analysis tools.

• MI:Composites Template—a template database schema and homepage for composites plus supporting import, export and analysis tools.

• MI:RSDB Template—a template database schema and homepage tools for in-house materials and substance data to support risk assessment and management relating to restricted substance regulations such as REACH.

• MI:Medical Template—a template database schema for medical applications, supporting capture of in-house engineering, biocompatibility, and other data alongside authoritative medical reference data.

Standard reports

• Restricted Substances Reports—reports and dashboards to provide risk assessments and compliance reports, including REACH Article 33 reports, obsolescence risk reports and others.

• Eco Audit Reports—reports and dashboards to provide up-front guidance on environmental impact, including energy, CO2 emissions and water usage.

• Critical Materials Reports—reports to summarize the risk associated with material criticality, price volatility, geopolitical risk and reporting restrictions due to Conflict Minerals legislation.

• Preferred Materials Reports—reports to summarize the preferred status of materials in a part, assembly or product portfolio, based on in-house material supplier tierings.



Add-on modules

• MI:Optimize—helps you to make strategic decisions relating to materials selection or substitution, and to implement these decisions enterprise-wide. It provides engineers and designers with web-based materials selection tools, customized to your organization’s business rules.

• MI:Substitute—a tool to identify candidate substitute materials and explore the implications of switching to them.

• MI:SDK—programmatic access to the data managed in GRANTA MI, enabling you to integrate in-house systems and data with your GRANTA MI installation. Includes the new Web Platform Toolkit for building your own GRANTA MI web apps.

Comprehensive descriptions of these tools and the combined capabilities of the resulting materials information management system are available in the accompanying documentation.

Supporting data modules

A wide range of supporting data modules provide reference data on metals, plastics, and composites that can be accessed via GRANTA MI and applied using its tools. See Section 5, Data products.

Packages

The products listed above are available in a number of packages, tailored for a specific industry or use case by combining relevant software and data modules:

• MI:Composites • MI:Metals • MI:Plastics • MI:Aero • MI:Automotive • MI:Medical • MI:Materials Strategy • MI:Product Intelligence • MI:Restricted Substances • MI:Industrial Design

Full details at www.grantadesign.com/products/mi/

http://www.grantadesign.com/products/mi/



3 Summary of Key Enhancements in Version 8

Key new features and enhancements since Version 7

• MI:Explore—new web application that can be tailored for specific users, helping them to quickly perform key tasks such as filtering, comparing, and plotting data from the GRANTA MI system. See GRANTA MI:Explore on page 10.

• Performance and usability improvements—Updates to the core MI:Server module make GRANTA MI more powerful than ever, including support for larger files, and performance enchangements in MI:Viewer and MI:Toolbox. See items (10) and (13) below.

• Next Generation Access Control—more flexible control of permissions and the power to manage complex access requirements. See item (2) on page 12.

• New template technology—speeds up the creation of data import templates. See item (1) on page 12.

• MI:Industrial Design Package—uses the functionality of MI:Explore (page 10) to provide design-led browsing of a company’s materials information, inspiring designers while ensuring their materials choices align with engineering possibilities. Applies new data on industry-standard color matching systems.

• MI:Restricted Substances Package—feedback from the EMIT consortium’s leading aerospace members led to a new database schema designed to reduce the risks associated with restricted substances. For more information, read the Restricted Substances Data Module 4.3 Release Notes.

• MI:Product Intelligence Package—import, build, and edit Bills of Materials for products or designs using the new BoM Analyzer (page 11), and run reports to assess product risk. Available via a web app or within your existing CAD software.

• New Materials Gateways—support is now available for the HyperMesh® CAE pre-processor from Altair and the Windchill® PLM system from PTC. For details, read the separate Release Notes for these products.

• MI:SDK Web Platform Toolkit—take advantage of Granta's new web platform technology to build your own GRANTA MI web apps.

• Extended language support—GRANTA MI is now available in French, German, Japanese, and Russian.

In addition to these features, Version 8 includes the underlying technology framework to support a new data synchronization capability. This will be piloted with Granta consortium members in early 2015. It allows subsets of data to be distributed to different locations while maintaining control of global deployments, and supports updates of reference data embedded within a larger database.

See What’s New?—Detailed Descriptions below for details of the features above and other enhancements.



Enhancements to GRANTA MI reference data modules In the data releases at the time of GRANTA MI Version 8 (December 2014):

• Updated plastics and metals data: updated versions of the MI-21, StahlDat SX, and NIMS (metals); Prospector® Plastics, CAMPUS® Plastics, and CAMPUS and M-Base Plastics data modules.

• New ecoInvent Key Materials Indicators data module: provides key materials indicators and background information from ecoinvent, enabling the environmental impacts of materials, chemicals, and processes to be assessed and compared in Granta software.

• Latest medical data: updated ASM Medical Materials module provides access to new information about the most recent device approvals and recalls, including materials, coating, and drugs data. This release also includes a preview of the new Surgical Devices module.

• Color matching systems: colors from Pantone Inc. and NCS Colour AB. Link colors to materials records to support industrial design decision-making.

• Updated MaterialUniverse: including new full records for PC+PBT and PC+PET, updated polymer linking, improved composition data for metals, Eco traceability data, hyperlinks to ASM Medical Materials, compositional database schema updates, and price updates.

Please see the individual data module release notes for more information about the enhancements included in each release; these can be viewed on the Granta website.

See also Section 5, Data products, for a full list of the data modules that are compatible with this release.

Find out what is of interest to you The table shows which enhancements will be of interest to particular groups. The item numbers in parentheses refer to the detailed descriptions of features on pages 10–16, below.

Audience Relevant features Key benefits

Materials experts New template tools (page 12) Speed up creation of new data import templates

Materials experts MI:Server updates (page 11) Efficiently manage large amounts of complex materials data

Database admins Next Generation Access Control (page 12)

Ensure compliance with intricate security and regulatory requirements

Database admins Template Databases, including major new version for Restricted Substances

Benefit from Granta’s unrivalled expertise and save time when setting up a materials database

Database admins and all users of GRANTA MI

Performance improvements (pages 14, 15)

Improved user experience; reduced project times; improved user satisfaction; get quicker ROI and more end user buy in

All users of GRANTA MI

MI:Explore (page 10) Fast, simple, intuitive access to relevant data

http://www.grantadesign.com/userarea/doc/midoc.htm



Audience Relevant features Key benefits

HyperMesh users MI:Materials Gateway for HyperMesh

More productive virtual product development process; lowers risk by ensuring accurate input data

WIndchill users MI:Materials Gateway for Windchill

Lower risk and better-informed decision-making throughout the product lifecycle

Industrial designers MI:Industrial Design Package Get inspiration, and cut time-to-market as design team decisions will be better-aligned with engineering possibilities

Environmental and product design teams

MI:Product Intelligence More likely to make eco/regulatory compliant choices earlier in the design process, when changes cost least for most impact

EH&S and restricted substance specialists

New Restricted Substances template

Benefit from best practice data structures to manage restricted substance data and minimize risk, developed with EMIT Consortium members

Materials experts and engineers using plastics

Updated CAMPUS Plastics, CAMPUS & M-Base Plastics, and Prospector data modules

Best possible decisions using latest data, available all in one place and extensively cross-linked

Materials experts and engineers using metals

Updated MI-21, StahlDat, and NIMS data modules

Best possible decisions using latest data, available all in one place and extensively cross-linked

Customer support staff at Granta will be pleased to provide advice on optimizing the performance of your GRANTA MI installation.



4 What’s New?—Detailed Descriptions This section details enhancements in GRANTA MI Version 8 since the Version 7 release in November 2013, including enhancements in all Version 7 update releases.

GRANTA MI:Explore MI:Explore is a web application that can be tailored for specific users, helping them find, visualize, and apply materials information in their GRANTA MI database and quickly perform key tasks such as filtering, comparing, and plotting.

It is easy to set up different apps for different user groups in your company, delivering only the data relevant to that user community. Users looking for the full set of tools to query, browse, report on, edit, import, and export data can use the general MI:Viewer web browser user interface.

Key benefits

• Easy-to-use interface, configurable for specific users and tasks—no need for training. • The latest web application technologies enable a great user experience. • Users can find and apply the materials information they need, fast. • Companies ensure every engineer or designer uses the right materials data.

The following documentation is available for MI:Explore:

• GRANTA MI:Explore Installation and Configuration Guide—a PDF document covering software prerequisites, installation, and configuration settings.

• Online User Help, accessed from the application’s Help button.

Please contact your Sales or Support representative to download your copy of MI:Explore.



GRANTA MI:BoM Analyzer MI:BoM Analyzer is an easy-to-use web application that connects to a GRANTA MI database on your corporate Intranet or elsewhere on the cloud, and allows you to access a wealth of material, process, and environmental data. That data can then be applied to your company’s products or product designs, and used to quickly generate information on factors such as product mass, environmental impact, or regulatory and supply risk. Use MI:BoM Analyzer to:

• Import and analyze ‘legacy’ Bills of Materials—for example, in order to identify environmental or regulatory risks associated with current products.

• Build your own BoMs in order to explore design concepts, before the CAD phase. • Apply Granta’s material and process data to investigate alternative designs.

The following documentation is available for MI:BoM Analyzer:

• GRANTA MI:BoM Analyzer Release Notes—product overview and system requirements. • GRANTA MI:BoM Analyzer Installation and Configuration Guide—a PDF document covering

the steps for installing MI:BoM Analyzer, linking to your MI database, and configuring the application.

• Online User Help, accessed from the application’s Help button.

Contact your Account Manager if interested in adding MI:BoM Analyzer to your system.



GRANTA MI:Server

New template tools 1.

One of the main ways that GRANTA MI users import data is via Microsoft® Excel®. Excel Templates are used to provide a convenient method of data entry, enabling people with no knowledge of GRANTA MI or the structure of the information that needs to be supplied to enter data values into a pre-formatted Excel worksheet. The template defines the worksheets where data is entered and additional worksheets that specify the data structure for the attributes and parameters to be imported, and various import options.

Excel Template Definitions, new in MI Version 8, speed up the creation of Excel templates:

• In MI:Admin, the MI database administrator creates Excel Template Definitions that specify the required layout, placement, import, and validation options for importing data into a specific table via Excel.

• In MI:Viewer, users can generate new Excel Templates quickly and easily by simply selecting the table or folder into which data will be imported, choosing an Excel Template Definition, and clicking Download. The settings in the selected Excel Template Definition are used to create the new Excel Template, which is then ready to be populated with data.

See the user Help for MI:Admin and MI:Viewer for more information on these tasks.

Next generation access control 2.

GRANTA MI’s new Attribute-based Access Control system places data security in the hands of the MI Database Administrator rather than the IT System Administrator, reducing the need for numerous roles that are ad hoc and limited in membership. The combination of new Access Control Categories and a powerful rule set that can evaluate different combinations of those attributes provides greater flexibility than a system based simply on numerous user roles or groups and object permissions. Scenarios where this is desirable include:

• Where there are many possible combinations of properties for a record which determine visibility, but a relatively small number of Windows Groups is needed to cover them.

• When the visibility of data depends on the status of a record, and the rules for who can see and edit data will change as a record passes from one status to the next.

• Where users need an easy way to report on the access control for a collection of records, or where they need to search for records with particular permissions.

For more information, see the GRANTA MI Access Control and Security Guide, available in the Documentation subfolder under the MI:Server installation folder.

Access to large, externally-stored files 3.

GRANTA MI database records can now include links to files of up to 1 Gb in size that are stored outside the database, enabling organizations who have large files to support their materials databases by linking to these files directly from GRANTA MI. Once the MI Adminstrator has carried out the necessary configuration steps, MI Viewer users can access the external files using hyperlink data attributes. See the GRANTA MI Administrator’s Guide for information on how to configure this feature.



Enhanced support for custom authorization and authentication 4.• A new “mixed mode” security configuration option allows the use of Windows

Authentication and Custom authorization, enabling your organization’s existing authorization mechanism to be used to determine the resources to which GRANTA MI users have access. See the GRANTA MI Installation Guide for information on how to configure this feature.

• By default, MI:Server uses NTLM as the Security Support Provider (SSP) for authentication. Kerberos can now be specified as the required SSP instead. See the GRANTA MI Installation Guide for information on how to configure this feature.

Installation Manager enhancements 5.• When installing MI:Server, the configuration database is now only created after the user’s

SQL Server login has been successfully verified, preventing a situation where users needed to restart the MI:Server installation process from the beginning after entering a password that did not meet the SQL Server password complexity requirements.

• The MI:Viewer installer now automatically adds the ASP.NET role for IIS on Windows Server 2012.

MI:Server Manager enhancements 6.• The Email Notifications page layout has been improved, with SMTP and email settings now

on two separate tabs - SMTP Settings and Email Generation – instead of all together on a single General Settings tab.

FEA Exporter enhancements 8.• Embedded Equations and Logic (EEL) data can now be exported, either as a single numeric

value (an interpolated value for the functional data curve) or as a series of data points. • Meta-attributes can now be exported along with attributes. • Greater flexibility is provided in the naming of files exported by the FEA Exporter. Default

export file names can now include additional formatting, allowing filenames to include attribute values, standard suffixes and special characters as well as the record name. For example, “AerMet 100_1234.zzz.asc”. See the GRANTA MI FEA Exporter Author Guide for further details.

GRANTA MI:Viewer

Charting enhancements 9.• It is now possible to overlay different kinds of data on Comparison Charts. For example, an

Equations and Logic functional (EEL) graph can be added to a series functional graph and compared. Previously, you could only add data of the same kind to a Comparison Chart.

• All of the curves in a Comparison Chart can now be removed with a single click. Individual curves can then be added back in one-by-one, making it easier to manually compare a subset of curves.

• Multiple records can now be added to a Comparison Chart at the same time: it is now possible to create a chart from the record list page that will overlay the data for all of the records in the list (for a particular selected attribute).

• Returning to an existing Comparison Chart is much easier now via a link that appears at the top of the Reports page.



• Legends in Comparison Charts now contain hyperlinks to records, in the same way as Comparison Table and X-Y Chart reports.

Performance Improvements 10.• Datasheets load more quickly. • Performance is improved when working with layouts that include embedded file hyperlinks

to large media files. • Removing links from a record that contains many links is now significantly quicker.

Usability enhancements 11.• Images in tabular data cells are now shown as thumbnails and, when clicked, open as a

full-size image in a new window. • Greater decimal digit precision when viewing tabular data. By default, tabular data column

values are displayed with the default number of significant figures, when this is enough to distinguish the values. However, the number of significant figures will automatically be increased for a parameter if it is necessary.

• If an email address is used as the value of a hyperlink attribute, clicking the link in MI:Viewer will now automatically prefix it with “mailto:” and launch the user’s mail client, when configured.

• Quality information is more visible in MI:Viewer: - Layout improvements make it easier to see quality information on datasheets at a glance. - Estimated quality values are now displayed next to the interpolated value when

interpolating functional data, for both grid data and series data. • Enhanced information is now available when a table includes data with links to records that

can't be located (for example, because of access control, version control, subset choice or because the records doesn’t exist): - In Read Mode, if none of the rows can find a linked record, the table is not displayed, and

a “No displayable data” message is shown. - In Edit Mode, if the table contains linking values, two additional columns are now

included, "Linking value" and "Linked record found", making it clear to the user why they cannot see anything.

• From MI Version 8, record names are no longer searched when using a search mask. It is possible to change this default behavior (to include record names in searches made using search masks) by changing a setting in the MI:Viewer configuration file appSettings.config. See the GRANTA MI Adminstrator’s Guide for more information on this.

GRANTA MI:Admin

Usability enhancements 12.• The language used to display the text in dialog boxes, menus, and other items in MI:Admin

can now easily be changed. This allows users running the application on a machine installed with an operating system in one language to use the software in a different language. On the Options menu, point to Language, and click the language required.

• The table type is now visible in the list on the Tables page in the Schema tool.



• Relative pathnames can now be included in datasheet headers and footers, ensuring that links in headers and footers are retained when restoring a database under a new name. See the MI:Admin Help to see how to specify relative pathnames in links.

• Workflow is improved when importing and exporting files and folders into database Home pages, Help pages, and Profiles: - You can now drag and drop files and folders from Windows Explorer into MI:Admin. - Finding files from the Import Folder and Export Folder dialog boxes is easier, with

sensible default folder locations. - Importing the files and folders you want is easier with new menu options: Import Files

imports just the selected files, Import Folder imports a folder and all of its contents, and Import Contents imports just the contents of a folder, without importing the folder.

- When importing files and folders that already exist, for example, when re-importing home pages after editing, a new Apply to All check box allows the same Skip/Replace/Rename option to be applied to all of the items being imported.

GRANTA MI:Toolbox

Usability and performance improvements 13.• The language used to display the text in dialog boxes, menus, and other items in MI:Toolbox

can now easily be changed. This allows users running the application on a machine installed with an operating system in one language to use the software in a different language. On the Options menu, point to Language, and click the language required.

• Significant performance improvements when importing data that includes smart record link groups.

• Significant performance improvements in the Text Importer. • Significant performance improvements when when importing large numbers of records into

the same folder using the Excel Importer.

Text Importer enhancements 14.• The character encoding format of the text files to be imported can now be specified in the

importer template using an <Encoding> element. See the GRANTA MI:Toolbox Text Importer Template Author Guide for details.

Excel Exporter enhancements 15.• Data quality on functional data points can now be exported. • Grid data can now be exported. • Accessing automatically-generated templates is easier because templates are now stored by

default in an AutoTemplates folder located in the user’s local application data folder, for example: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Granta Design\MI\AutoTemplates

• Exporting tabular data now results in much smaller Excel files, as the default number of rows formatted for a named range has been reduced from 65536 to 100.



Remote Import enhancements 16.• New functionality in the Remote Import API allows you to check on the status of a specified

job, enabling you to check whether the job has run and is successful, or not. To get the status of a job ("Succeeded", "Failed" or "In progress"), call: /api/getstatus/{jobid} To get the log file, call: /api/getlog/{jobid}

GRANTA MI:Service Layer

Support for MI Custom Basic Authentication 17.

The IIS Service Host for Service Layer now supports MI custom (3rd-party) authentication. This can be enabled/disabled via the MI:Service Layer Configuration Tool. See the Help for the configuration tool for details.

GRANTA MI:Server API

Improved support for bulk data operations 18.

To support customers doing bulk data operations using the MI:Server API, a new method GetLatestRecordsFromRecordHistoryIdentities() is now available in the public API.



5 Data products All of the Granta data modules listed below are compatible with GRANTA MI Version 8.

Several data modules have been updated with new and/or updated content recently, as indicated. The others listed here are fully compatible with MI Version 8, but do not include any new content updates at this time.

See www.grantadesign.com/products/data for detailed information about GRANTA MI data modules.

Table 5-1 Data modules compatible with MI Version 8 (December 2014)

Data module Content updated since Version 7?

New/updated exporters for Version 8*

ASM Medical Materials (incorporating Cardiovascular, Orthopaedic, Neurological, and Surgical data modules)

Yes Yes

ASME BPV Code (Customary) Yes Coming soon

ASME BPV Code (Metric) Yes Coming soon

CAMPUS Plastics Yes Yes

CAMPUS and M-Base Plastics Yes Yes

CAMPUS and M-Base Plastics (German) Yes Yes

CMH-17

Composite Design Yes

ecoInvent Key Materials Indicators Yes

ESDU MMDH

Firehole Composites

Human Biological Materials Yes Yes

MaterialUniverse Yes Yes

MaterialUniverse Medical Edition Yes Yes

MaterialUniverse Polymer Edition Yes Yes

MI-21 Yes

MMPDS-08 Yes Yes

NCS Colors Yes

NIMS Creep and Fatigue Yes

NIMS Creep Yes

NIMS Fatigue Yes

Pantone Colors Yes

Powder Metallurgy

Prospector Plastics (formerly IDES) Yes

Sheet Steels for Automotive

http://www.grantadesign.com/products/data



Data module Content updated since Version 7?

New/updated exporters for Version 8*

StahlDat SX Yes Yes

StahlDat SX (German) Yes Yes

Steel Spec Yes

* If you are using FEA exporters from MI Version 6 or earlier releases, please read FEA Exporters from older MI releases (Version 6 or earlier) on page 23.



6 Documentation at this release The following table details the PDF documentation available for and installed with the GRANTA MI software at this release.

In addition, user help is available by clicking Help in any GRANTA MI application.

Document title Description

Release Notes for GRANTA MI Version 8.0 (this document)

Provides an overview of the new features and enhancements in Version 8.

GRANTA MI SYSTEM AND DATABASE ADMINISTRATION

GRANTA MI 8.0 System Requirements Detailed information on the hardware and software requirements for GRANTA MI Version 8.

GRANTA MI Installation Guide Step-by-step instructions on installing GRANTA MI, from installation prerequisites to installing the MI:Server software components and GRANTA MI databases; includes installation and setup of the MI:Service Layer and the Remote Import tool.

GRANTA MI Administration Guide Detailed information on the administration of the GRANTA MI system and GRANTA MI databases, covering:

• Configuration and administration of MI:Server and MI:Viewer

• Administration of GRANTA MI databases, including controlling profiles and access control

• MI:Toolbox plug-in configuration

GRANTA MI Access Control and Security Describes how system security, database security, and access control can be used to control user access to GRANTA MI.

GRANTA MI Record Version Control Describes how version control is implemented in GRANTA MI, allowing changes to a record and its data to be tracked.

GRANTA MI Documentation Information about the PDF reference documentation and user Help provided with GRANTA MI.

CUSTOMIZATION

GRANTA MI:Optimize Guide Describes how the 'business rules' – the calculations and preferred material classifications – that define your materials selection strategy can be captured systematically in a Microsoft Excel template file and then imported into an MI database to define the steps, options and controls available in the MI:Viewer Optimize wizard.

GRANTA MI:Viewer Home Page Author Guide Describes how to set up customized application, profile and database home pages for MI:Viewer users.



Document title Description

IMPORTING DATA

GRANTA MI:Toolbox Excel Importer Template Author Guide

The MI:Toolbox Excel Importer plug-in is used to import data from Microsoft Excel into a GRANTA MI database using template worksheets inside a template workbook.

This document describes the specification of the Excel templates for the Importer.

GRANTA MI:Toolbox Excel Importer Command Line Interface

Documents the arguments available when running the Excel Importer from the command line.

GRANTA MI:Toolbox Text Importer Template Author Guide

The MI:Toolbox Text Importer plug-in is used to import data from text files into a GRANTA MI database.

This document describes the specification of the XML template files used by the Text Importer.

GRANTA MI:Toolbox Text Importer Command Line Interface

Documents the arguments available when running the Text Importer from the command line.

GRANTA MI:Toolbox Bulk Data Importer Command Line Interface

Documents how to use the Bulk Data Importer command-line tool for importing data from text or Excel files into a GRANTA MI database without the need for user interaction.

EXPORTING DATA

GRANTA MI:Toolbox Excel Exporter Template Author Guide

The MI:Toolbox Excel Exporter plug-in is used to export data from a GRANTA MI database into a Microsoft Excel workbook. This is done through the use of template worksheets inside a template workbook.

This document describes the specification of the Excel templates for the Exporter.

TRANSFORMING DATA

GRANTA MI Automatic Link Creator Command Line Interface

The Automatic Link Creator is a command-line tool for creating static record links within a GRANTA MI database.

GRANTA MI Tabular Roll-up Module Command Line Interface

The Tabular Roll-up Module is a command-line tool for converting the data in a specified column of a tabular attribute to a single value using a roll-up rule, and using this value to populate another attribute within the same record.



7 Upgrading from previous versions of GRANTA MI See the GRANTA MI Installation Guide for upgrade advice and detailed information about the upgrade process.

It is strongly recommended that you back up your existing databases before performing any upgrade.

Custom files It is strongly recommended that you back up any custom files (e.g., system home page, custom report settings) to a different directory before performing a GRANTA MI software upgrade.

Search projects Search projects from earlier versions will not be available for use in MI:Viewer in Version 8.

Upgrading your databases Any databases that you retain from your previous version of GRANTA MI will need to be upgraded to be compatible with GRANTA MI Version 8 using the MI:Server Manager tool. The status of any databases that need to be upgraded will be displayed in MI:Server Manager as “Must Upgrade”. Until the databases are upgraded, they will be unavailable to users. To upgrade, select the database and click on the Upgrade Schema button at the bottom of the screen.

New/updated Granta reference databases When a new GRANTA MI software version is released, existing Granta reference databases can either be:

• replaced with a new edition which includes a new database schema and (usually) new content, or

• upgraded, where the existing database schema is modified to make it compatible with the new software release, but no changes are made to the content.

For Granta reference databases with new/updated content (see Data products on page 17), provided that your existing Granta reference database has not been extended with additional in-house data that you want to keep, you should simply replace your existing database with the latest version (where available), rather than upgrading it. For more information, see the GRANTA MI Installation Guide.

GRANTA MI reference databases are supplied in the form of a SQL Server backup file. You will need administrative access to SQL Server to restore the backup file and map user roles, as described in the GRANTA MI Installation Guide.



Reapplying changes to GRANTA MI configuration files after a software upgrade Please note that an upgrade of GRANTA MI software is effectively a new installation of GRANTA MI. Existing GRANTA MI configuration files will be replaced with new ones, and any changes made to the old files will need to be reapplied to the new files.

Backup copies of GRANTA MI configuration files are automatically made before the upgrade is performed.

• Backups for MI:Viewer and MI:Service Layer files are made in the local part of the user profile. The precise location is dependent on the operating system, typical locations are:

%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Granta Design\MI\ %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Granta Design\MI\

• Backups of other configuration files can be found in a backup folder created in the relevant installation folder (for example, under C:\Program Files\Granta\GRANTA MI ).



8 Known Issues

FEA Exporters from older MI releases (Version 6 or earlier) From GRANTA MI Version 7 onwards, the .NET XslCompiledTransform XSLT processor is used in FEA Exporters. This replaced the XslTransform class used in older versions of GRANTA MI.

Any text exporters written or modified in MI Version 6 or earlier should be tested to ensure they do not require any adjustment to work with XslCompiledTransform. In particular, XslCompiledTransform will not load any exporters with templates containing uninitialized parameters or variables, even if the template is never called.

Exporters in older Granta reference databases (that is, Granta reference databases from MI version 6 or earlier) will need replacing in order to work with XslCompiledTransform.

Note that, whenever possible, existing Granta reference databases (including exporters) should be replaced with a new edition or upgraded to be compatible with the latest MI software version (where available); see Data products on page 17.

See http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/66f54faw.aspx for further information about migrating from the XslTransform class.

If you want to continue to use your existing (Version 6 or older) Granta FEA exporters, you have two options:

• Modify your exporters to make them work with XslCompiledTransform. This is the recommended option.

• Alternatively, it is possible to configure MI:Server to use the obsolete XslTransform class by default.

Option 1 (recommended): Modify your exporters

If you have modified copies of the following files, or are not planning to replace your Granta reference database with a new edition, you should follow the steps below:

CommonUtilities.xsl, AbaqusUtilities.xsl AnsysUtilities.xsl

Procedure:

Remove the following template references from CommonUtilities.xsl and put them in a new 1.file named PlasticHardening.xsl. <xsl:template name="plasticHardeningData"> <xsl:template match="plasticStress | plasticStrain">

Add the following reference to the files AbaqusUtilities.xsl and AnsysUtilities.xsl: 2.<xsl:include href="PlasticHardening.xsl"/>

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/66f54faw.aspx



Option 2: Configure MI to use XslTransform

It is possible to configure MI Version 8 to use the obsolete XslTransform class by default. To do this, you need to edit the MI:Server configuration file MIServer.exe.config:

In a text editor, open the configuration file MIServer.exe.config (located in the bin folder in 1.your MI:Server installation folder).

Locate the following line: 2.<TransformStore transformClass="XslCompiledTransform"/>

Make the following change: 3.<TransformStore transformClass="XslTransform"/>

Save your changes and close the file. 4.