COCO 3.0 released

[jasper]

We are proud to announce that COCO 3.0 is now available for download:

http://www.cocosimulator.org/index_download.html

or use COCO Update (CUP)....

You may have noticed that is has been a while since the last update that was made available via CUP. But it was worth the wait, you will find that COCO 3 has some major improvements.

The flowsheet solver of COFE has been completely redone. COFE by default now uses a parallel solution scheme, utilizing multiple threads where it can to get to a flowsheet solution in less time. Additional performance improvement results from solver strategy corrections and modifications.

Whereas COFE 2 and earlier wrote binary .fsd files in a proprietary format, the fsd files COFE 3 are open format. Flowsheets are now saved as zipped XML files. This does not only make that you can recover your flowsheets more easily, but you can also interpret and even manipulate your flowsheets outside of COFE just by manipulation of the fsd files themselves. To the extent possible, PMC information is also written in a human readable way; PMCs that offer the ability for persistence via IPersistPropertyBag will find their properties persisted as XML fields in fsd files. The PMCs in TEA, COUSCOUS and CORN of course provide this functionality, as do some third party products (as per this release).

The new release of ChemSep 7.0 LITE brings us a new PMC: ChemSep LITE thermodynamics are now available as CAPE-OPEN property packages for use in COFE and other CAPE-OPEN compliant simulation environments.

Additional changes include:

- new flowsheet partitioning algorithm,
- many corrections and enhancements to COFE flowsheets embedded as CAPE-OPEN unit operations,
- the ability for unit operations to reset their internal data upon a flowsheet reset via a new CAPE-OPEN mechanism,
- the ability to abort unit operation calculations upon cancellation of a flowsheet solution via a new CAPE-OPEN mechanism,
- many performance improvements,
- automated weekly update checking (can be disabled from COFE preferences),
- CUP update checks no longer request permission to elevate if not required
- CUP update checks have been made safer through hashing and signing of the online files, and all COCO binaries are code-signed,
- corrections to the check for linear dependencies in the reaction schemes of COUSCOUS reactors,
- new component definitions in ChemSepLite.pcd
- many bug fixes

For a complete list of changes, please visit:

http://www.cocosimulator.org/index_changes.html

If you are authoring CAPE-OPEN applications and you would like to take part in the CAPE-OPEN compliancy testing programme, please visit:

http://www.cocosimulator.org/index_compliancy.html

[nrgeng]

Congratulations to you and the others who have contributed to this release. I am anxious to download to try COCO 3. Thank you for the great effort.

[jasper]

Thank you - also for your contribution in getting this release ready.

[HenkF]

Cheers Jasper,
Thanks for all your efforts, improvements and excellent work.
Well done!
Henk

[jasper]

Thank you - also for your contributions in this release.

[bcbooo]

Congratulation!

COFE is the best tool for CAPE-OPEN developers. Hope COFE will be more perfect.

[jasper]

Thank you. I aim for that.

[jasper]

In the first week after its release, a number of critical issues have been fixed. You are encouraged to update.

As the ability to automatically update is one of the issues fixed, please update manually (either by downloading the new installer, or by running CUP, which, for versions between 3.0.0.0 and 3.0.0.4, may require to be started with administrative rights).

[nrgeng]

I have downloaded and I am running Windows 10 without encountering any problems in using COCO 3.

[jasper]

Good to hear. I am running from Win 10 now myself as well.