Here is a history list of what's changed recently in TS/PP-Draft 5.0:

5.0.0.39

Fixed an error in pasting a diagram from one file to another -- any trip logs in the target file were erased.

Fixed a bug that, in rare cases, caused the offset reference point to be misinterpreted upon importing UTDF files.

5.0.0.38

Fixed a error that could occur when you try to add a GPS position for an intersection before starting tracking with the GPS receiver.

5.0.0.37

Added a topic "How Trip Logs are Processed" to the online help, giving some general comments, definitions, and tips on recording and working with trip logs.

Fixed a quirk that prevented the tab key from highlighting the Start Logging Trips button.

5.0.0.36

Added another option while entering geographic positions of intersections: You may click the Extrapolate Positions button to use the current intersection's geographic coordinates along with the X-Y grid coordinates to calculate the geographic coordinates of intersections that don't yet have them specified. This can save time after importing from UTDF files, which contain X-Y grid coordinates but no geographic coordinates, but there can be some drawbacks: Some initial tests suggest that the X-Y grid coordinates may be considerably less accurate than GPS measurements. The resulting inaccuracy will be carried over into Travel Time and Delay reports. Also, with just the one calculated geographic position, the width (and its standard deviation in GPS readings) of these intersections is known with less certainty than when there is more than one measurement, as discussed above.

5.0.0.35

Included yet more new items in the Travel Time and Delay Report:

5.0.0.34

Made for a smoother recovery from an attempt to overwrite a file marked as read-only.

Fixed a couple of minor nuisances.

5.0.0.33

Included some new items in the Travel Time and Delay Report:

You may specify two speeds for the above items, for a total of 4 new columns in the report.

Improved the accuracy of reading the intersection position from the GPS while in a moving vehicle.

5.0.0.32

Fixed a long-standing annoyance. After using the Zoom box on the toolbar, if you clicked on the diagram to select an intersection, then used the cursor keys to change the offset or the mouse wheel to scroll the diagram window, the Zoom box intercepted the adjustments instead of the intersection or diagram. This now works correctly.

5.0.0.31

Fixed an error in calculating the left-turn queue on platoon-progression diagrams. This error was introduced when the support for the left hand drive rule was added.

5.0.0.30

Added an option to the exporting of UTDF files to remove an ambiguity: You may now check a box "Export a strictly rectangular grid" to ensure that the links between intersections in the UTDF files all lie along horizontal or vertical lines, no diagonal lines. In this case, the intersection positions in the UTDF files will be (artificially) rearranged as needed to ensure that all streets run strictly North-South or East-West. See the comments associated with the 5.0.0.29 version for a discussion of why you might wish to use this option.

Added an extra parameter to the GPS options: number of seconds interruption to tolerate while recording trip logs. GPS receivers will sometimes fail to provide an updated position for some interval of time. This can be for various reasons, including

It seems that some GPS receivers are more prone to this than others. A couple of Garmins and an Earthmate I've tested virtually never have interruptions, but a Magellan I've been testing seems to be more flaky -- it can go for tens of seconds without updating the position information for none of the above reasons, as far as I can tell.

While merely tracking with the GPS receiver, this usually isn't a problem. TS/PP-Draft just ignores the missing information and updates the position when it's available again. But for recording trip logs, a long gap in the recording is of more concern as it may lead to inaccurate Travel Time and Delay Reports. The GPS receiver reports the time accurately whenever it reports the position, so when the information flow resumes after an interruption, TS/PP-Draft will still know the current position and time, but there may still be inaccuracies:

As a result, you may now specify the number of seconds of interruption to tolerate when recording trip logs. The default is 7 seconds, but you may want to increase this number if you're experiencing frequent and inexplicable interruptions. You may want to reduce this number if your GPS receiver is generally reliable and you want to reduce the chances for even minor errors creeping into the TT&D reports as a result of a rare interruption.

5.0.0.29

Improved the performance of creating UTDF files from scratch.

Upon importing UTDF files, Synchro (and probably other programs) relies heavily on the approach direction labels (N, S, E, W, NE, SW, NW, and SE) to interpret the timings and lane group parameters. If it thinks an approach should be labelled N, but the information in the UTDF files is under the NW label, Synchro won't assume that NW is the label for the intended approach, and instead it will read no information for that approach. (TS/PP-Draft, when it imports UTDF files, treats these labels with a grain of salt because the UTDF file specification does not indicate how these labels should be assigned). This would be fine, but the UTDF specification gives no guidance for when an approach is labelled N, W, or NW, for example, so programs won't necessarily follow the same rules. TS/PP-Draft uses the rule

Generally use the direction label "closest" to the actual direction of the approach, giving a strong preference to N, S, E, and W over NE, SW, NW, and SE. "Strong preference" means the N, S, E, and W have a 70-degree acceptance window, and the diagonal labels (NE, SW, NW, and SE) get a 20-degree acceptance window.

This wouldn't be a problem if all programs, including Synchro, also treated these labels with a grain of salt, but until then, the importing into Synchro of UTDF files created from scratch by TS/PP-Draft is reliable only for streets that neatly align to a rectangular grid. (See the comments for version 5.0.0.30 for an option to do this automatically).

5.0.0.28

Fixed a main part of a rare problem two users have reported in which they get intermittent interruptions while recording trip logs with the GPS receiver. The diagnostic version was designed to help track down the cause of these interruptions.

Background: It seems that a few characters are dropped every now and then, making the checksum criteterion to fail, causing TS/PP-Draft to panic. This seems to be correlated to the speed of the machine, with the problem more likely on slower machines. So far, the best I can make out is that TS/PP-Draft isn't able to read the serial port within the necessary time before the characters go away, probably because there are too many greedy background processes running at the same time.

With this version, TS/PP-Draft remains calm in the face of minor interruptions. Since it seems to be the loss of just a few characters, the software now just ignores the corrupted messages and picks up at the next trustworthy message. Usually there is no loss of data, since many of these messages are unused or used only for feedback to the user (such as the number, position, and signal strength of various satellites). It will still complain if the interruptions last longer than about 6 seconds.

If you experience such problems with this version, please let me know. I expect they could be reduced further by closing unneccesary applications and background processes, including unneccessary windows within TS/PP-Draft such as the GPS Status form and the Network View. I'd appreciate hearing about your experience -- especially whether closing these unneccesary applications, processes, and windows makes any detectable difference.

5.0.0.27

Fixed a problem that can occur in interpreting the splits at T-intersections upon importing UTDF files.

5.0.0.26

Fixed an error that can occur in importing UTDF files. In some cases, permitted (only) left turn phase sequence was be interpreted as permitted + protected.

Provided some additional feedback in the Intersection Geographic Position window, showing the displacement of each measurement from the average. This helps identify bad measurements or measurements applied to the wrong intersection.

5.0.0.25

Added Next and Previous buttons to the Intersection Geographic Position window to skip to the next (or previous) intersection along the artery without error checking or offering to update the distance between intersections. This simplifies collecting the intersection coordinates using a GPS while riding along in a vehicle.

5.0.0.24

Fixed a problem in the generation of Travel Time & Delay Reports. In rare instances on wide arteries, the report could show a trip log bypassing an intersection or passing through an intersection twice in a row. The new algorithm introduces a small change in the calculation of the travel distance and travel speed over the former algorithm. This change is well within the precision of the GPS receiver.

5.0.0.23

Whenever a (diagram) file is overwritten, keep a backup copy of the original file with the name "Backup of <filename>".

Fix a quirk that required evaluation license users to use the slash '/' as a date format seperator.

Add several more entries to the Troubleshooting section of the FAQs in the online help:

While tracking with the GPS receiver, I don't see my current position on the diagram. or My recorded trip logs don't appear on the diagram.

While tracking with the GPS receiver, the marker on the diagram shows me at the wrong point in the cycle. For example, it shows me passing through and signal just after it turned red, but actually I was well in the green time.

The Travel Time & Delay Report says that my recorded trip log stops before an intersection then resumes at the next intersection downstream. or The TT&D Report says that my trip log started at intersection X, but it actually started at the previous intersection upstream.

I've just recorded some trip logs, but I don't see them on the Network View.

5.0.0.22

Fix a error that can occur after recording a 0-length trip log. I'm hoping I also fixed it so the software won't allow such a trip log to get recorded in the first place, but since I'm not sure how this occured, I can't be certain right now. That may have to wait until we all get more experience with making travel time runs with a GPS connected to the laptop.

5.0.0.21

Fix a problem that can occur when importing UTDF files that contain a bend of about 90 degrees or more. In some cases, TS/PP-Draft would split the bending artery into two diagrams.

5.0.0.20

Include some new items in the Travel Time and Delay Report:

Fix an error in showing the multiple sub bands that can arise at a double-cycled signal downstream from a full-cycled (or longer) signal when the band action is set to Clip.

5.0.0.19

Fix a bug in calculating the set of green bands where a double-cyclelength intersection has a tapered or clipped band.

Fix a phasing problem that can occur upon importing a T-intersection from UTDF files.

Show the travel times on the diagram in a more space-efficient way.

Make the CopyToDgmFile utility more tolerant of some special cases that might be in the target file.

5.0.0.18

Add buttons to the Toolbar to start/stop tracking with the GPS receiver and to start/stop recording a trip log.

Include some new items in the Travel Time and Delay Report:

Improve the reliability of recovering from a data signal interruption from the DeLorme Earthmate GPS receiver.

Fix a division by zero error that can occur at certain screen resolutions when two intersections are closely spaced.

Fix an error that can occur when importing UTDF files for two arteries joined at a Y intersection.

5.0.0.17

Try to recover gracefully from a data signal interruption from the GPS receiver, such as the serial cable being temporarily disconnected.

5.0.0.16

Add a multi-level Undo command to the Edit menu.

5.0.0.15

Try to recover gracefully from a power interruption to the Earthmate GPS receiver.

Add a tutorial to the online help on how to create a signalized network.

5.0.0.14

Fixed a possible floating point error recently introduced. For some reason I don't yet understand, some GPS trip logs sometimes record more than one identical reading (same time, same location, same everything). This could cause a problem in calculating the Start Up Lost Time, but this is now fixed.

5.0.0.13

Provide a button to automatically calculate the Start Up Lost Time from trip logs recorded with the GPS receiver. In a future update, I expect I'll add a corresponding button to calculate the Clearance Lost Time as well.

Tweak the Travel Time & Delay Report calculation a bit to improve the accuracy.

5.0.0.12

Allow the GPS receiver to be connected to serial ports up to COM32.

Work around a "printer index out of bounds" problem that can occur when printing the report from Windows 2000 to a networked printer.

Fix an error that occurs in some of the dialog boxes when using Left-hand Drive Rule. The drop-down lists boxes become uninitialized.

5.0.0.11

Changed the band widths shown at the top of the Report to be the width of the through band actually displayed on the diagram emerging downstream from the boundary interections.

5.0.0.10

Improve the calculation from trip logs of the travel distance, travel time (or relative offset), and average speed, and allow you to choose among the runs where a trip log includes more than one run.

Provide the option of showing travel times between intersections at the bottom of the diagram.

Fix a minor problem that caused the scrolled-off portion of a diagram to sometimes have a gray background.

5.0.0.9

Fixed and error that occurs in some cases in displaying signals on diagrams where the offset references a crosseet phase. This is the same error I tried to fix with 5.0.0.6, but didn't quite get it right. How embarrassing. I hope it's fixed for good this time.

5.0.0.8

Added a Diagnostics page to the GPS Receiver view to show the raw data arriving over the serial port. This can help you troubleshoot the connection to the GPS receiver.

5.0.0.7

Really fix the problem of 0-second cycle lengths in UTDF files at actuated-uncoordinated signals. Ver. 5.0.0.1 was intended to fix this, but it seems that in some cases the fix wasn't sufficient.

Work around a quirk that can appear in UTDF Timings files written by Synchro 5. The offset reference point is sometimes indicated not quite in accordance with the UTDF file specification.

5.0.0.6

Fixed and error that occurs in some cases in displaying signals on diagrams where the offset references a crosseet phase.

Changed the drawing of green bands to remove the apparent discontinuity as the band passes through a signal.

5.0.0.5

When tracking with a GPS receiver, provide the option of showing a horizontal line and/or vertical line on the diagram showing the current time at all positions or the current position at all times.

Fixed a bug in certain rare conditions that could cause the offset to periodically shift by a small amount. It only occured where there are clearance times with fractions of a second and certain offset reference points at an interesection that appears in more than one diagram. It was difficult to notice a difference until the cumulative effects of many such minor changes made it obvious.

In copying lost times from one file to another with CopyFromDgm utility, ensure the band offset and widths are updated properly.

5.0.0.4

Fixed a few problems that can occur reading some UTDF files. "Custom" phase sequences were misinterpreted in some cases.

When the geographic position of an intersection changes, ensure that the GPS trip logs displayed on the diagram are updated promptly.

5.0.0.3

Fixed a bug that caused many of the splits labels on the diagram to be hidden by the color-filled green bands.

5.0.0.2

Added a step-by-step tutorial to the online help on how to operate with the GPS receiver and perform a travel time and delay study.

5.0.0.1

You now have the option of typing in the geographic coordinates of an intersection instead of reading them from a connected GPS receiver.

In calculating the travel distance and average travel speed from trip logs, the 3-D coordinates are now used to account for hills and grades. That is, changing elevation above sea level is considered in the calculation. Originally, I left this out because the elevation is measured much less accurately than longitude and latitude, and I worried that phantom hills could be introduced along a flat artery. But some tests I did suggest that this error is small compared to ignoring the effects of real grades and hills. If you believe otherwise, please contact me; I'd like to hear your thoughts or experience.

Worked around a problem in reading Synchro's UTDF Timings file. For some reason I don't understand, the cycle length of actuated-uncoordinated signals is declared to be 0. This was causing problems for TS/PP-Draft, so this version now calculates the cycle length from the sum of the splits.

Last revised: July 22, 2003