Groundwater Vistas Version 6 Status

I mentioned last week that I would provide a status report on Groundwater Vistas Version 6. This version has a bit more installation complexity than previous versions. Here are some observations from the first month:

• If you download the full installations from our web site, make sure to only use the 32-bit installer if you have the Standard version of Groundwater Vistas. Even if you have the 64-bit version of Windows, the Standard version of GV will only work under 32-bit mode.
• Also, when downloading from the web, you will see two files called "setup" after unzipping the archive. You need to run the one with a *.exe extension rather than the *.msi file.
  
• When using a security code instead of the HASP key on Windows 7, you will often need to right-click the gwv.exe program file in the gwv6 directory and choose "run as administrator". Then set the security code and close the program. If you do not do that, the security code may need to be entered again the next time you use Groundwater Vistas.

We fixed a few minor problems so far. The latest version is 6.02 Build 10. Here are the modifications:

• The MODFLOW+MT3D option on the Model menu was not running MT3D after MODFLOW.
• Added direct support for importing MODFLOW-Surfact *.con (binary concentration) files under Props/Import/Matrix. You could import them before but it was not obvious.
• Importing data into the SWI interfaces on the props menu (using row-column-layer format), the 4th column of data was being ignored.
• There was a problem importing an existing GHB input file using MODFLOW2000 format with reach numbers. This was actually also a problem in version 5, but just showed up now.
• Log color floods of concentrations produced strange results when negative concentrations were computed by MT3D. They are now ignored.
• MODFLOW2005 was not releasing memory properly after a run. This was actually a bug in the USGS code but it does not affect command-line programs (only our DLL versions).
• USGS apparently fixed a previous bug in MODFLOW2005 where the ET cell-by-cell flows from the UZF Package had the wrong sign. We just multiplied by -1 in Vistas but that caused problems with the new version where it was corrected. Everything is fine now between UZF in MODFLOW2005 and in Vistas.