Issue 74, April 2007

How can I tell where a maintenance policy is assigned in a BlockSim project?
Maintenance Policies, Crew Policies and Spare Parts Policies are common resources that are available to be used by various blocks and diagrams within a BlockSim project. Such resources can now be managed easily with a new feature in BlockSim 7. The Resource Usage window shows you which diagrams, blocks, fault trees or gates have resources assigned to them and which resources remain unused. To access the window, select Resource Usage from the Project menu or the Resources shortcut menu in the Project Explorer.

The two tabs at the bottom of the window allow you to view the information either in a dependency tree view, as shown above, or in list form, as shown below. This Report view can be printed by clicking the Print button.

If you want to modify the properties of the item where a resource is assigned, simply select the desired diagram, block, fault tree or gate in the Tree View and click the View Item button. BlockSim will navigate directly to the item in the MDI. If you want to change the properties of a particular policy, select the desired resource in the Tree View and click View Item. The policy window will automatically open and allow you edit the properties. After making changes, you can click the Refresh Report button to update the Resource Usage information in either the dependency tree or list view.

You can also delete all unused resources in a project in a single batch by clicking the Remove Unused button. When this command is selected, a warning message appears asking if you want to proceed, as this action cannot be undone. button. A warning message will appear asking whether you want to proceed, as this action cannot be undone.

How are Stress Profiles managed in ALTA 7 PRO?
In ALTA 7 PRO, Stress Profiles are now fully integrated into the project instead of being handled by a separate Stress Profile Explorer utility. This eliminates the intermediate step of saving a Stress Profile to a Stress Library and then attaching the library to a Folio. All Stress Profiles in a project are available for use with all Standard Folios in the project and you can import and export Stress Profiles among projects just as you would Folios or other project items. An ALTA 7 PRO Stress Profile is shown next.

There are several ways to access and use your Stress Profiles from an existing ALTA 6 PRO analysis:

• You can open an ALTA 6 file (*.ra6) directly in ALTA 7 PRO. All Stress Profiles in the associated Stress Library will be added to the ALTA 7 project.
• You can import an ALTA 6 file by selecting Add From File from the Project menu. All Stress Profiles in the associated Stress Library will be added to the ALTA 7 project.
• You can import an ALTA 6 Stress Library (*.rsl) by selecting Add From File from the Project menu. All Stress Profiles in the Stress Library will be added to the ALTA 7 project.

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