Changelog (from 4.1.1)

Overview

This release includes several bug fixes and improvements for OpenFAST and fixes a critical error in the Visual Studio build system for OpenFAST and MoorDyn.

General

Visual Studio build system

#2914 Add SeaState path when running MoorDyn registry in RunRegistry.bat (@deslaughter)

Solvers

OpenFAST

#2915 Don't allow MAP when writing checkpoint files (@deslaughter)

Module changes

HydroDyn

#2941 HD: Switched to an equivalent but numerically more reliable expression for the hydrostatic moment on (partially wetted) circular endplates (@luwang00)

SeaState

#2919 Backport of #2906 ( SeaState: Allow WaveStMod=1 with WaveMod=0) (@luwang00)

ServoDyn

#2942 SrvD: bugfix linearization of StC _dYdx was not using x_perturb (@andrew-platt)

SubDyn

#2934 Backport of 2905: SD: Fix a bug where interface DoF loads are incomplete if the interface joint is part of a rigid assembly (@luwang00)

Documentation

#2931 docs: add guide for WSL+VScode (@skvibimigger)

#2937 Docs update recomendations from issue #1822 (FAST.Farm) (@andrew-platt)

Testing

Test results for the StC_test_OC4Semi_Linear_Nac and StC_test_OC4Semi_Linear_Tow cases were updated in #2942 - these were missing effects from the state variables for structural controls.

Input file changes

No input file changes since v4.1.0

Known issues

There are several issues that have not been addressed in this release due to time constraints, but will be addressed in future releases. These include:

• No visualization of rectangular members from HydroDyn or SubDyn through the VTK output options
• Missing and broken features from several c-binding library interfaces:
  • the AeroDyn_Inflow_c-binding library interface does not allow for coupling to the tower. This will require an interface update.
  • the HydroDyn_c-binding library interface does not currently support vizualization. This will require an interface update.
  • the InitNodePositions input to HydroDyn_c-binding library interface does not currently work with any non-zero x or y coordinates (non-zero z is ok)
  • the MoorDyn_c-binding library interface does not currently support vizualization. This will require an interface update.
  • error messages from c-binding library interfaces will get truncated to 1024 characters. A fix is nearly ready, but will have to wait until the next release.
• A glue-codes/labview/src/WaveTank.f90 file is included in this release, but it is incomplete and untested. This is a placeholder for internal development work that may be released in complete form at a later date.
• The GitHub deploy action to build Windows executables does not currently catch failed builds. This might be addressed at a later date. We are manually checking these builds for now.
• Documentation on the new pyOpenFAST module is incomplete. Partial documentation exists on how to use it in regression testing, but no documentation or examples exist on using it to call c-bindings modules from Python.
• Documentation is incomplete for HydroDyn, SubDyn, and a few other modules.
• Checkpoint restarts do not work with MAP++ (#2947)

Precompiled Windows Binaries

The binary files in this release were built with the Visual Studio solution files distributed with OpenFAST (not using cmake), using

• Intel Fortran compiler 2021.12 (p_oneAPI_2024.1.0.595) with Microsoft Visual Studio 2022
• Microsoft Visual C++ 2022 (C), for build in Matlab
• MATLAB Version: 2024.2.999 (R2024b)
• Executables with _OpenMP or _OMP in the name are built with OpenMP libraries and linked with dynamic libraries.
  • You will need this Intel Fortran redistributable package installed to use these executables if you do not already have Intel Fortran OneAPI 2024 installed. See the installation instructions here.
  • You may also need a redistributable library for Visual Studio installed. See instructions here.

The other OpenFAST executables DO NOT require these redistributable libraries to be installed. Instead, they were built with static libraries.