Dear Colleagues and Friends,
it is with great pleasure that we now inform you of the official release of openLCA version 1.4.1!
A lot of improvements were made with the last major release in the summer of 2014 and since then we have continued to work diligently on adding features, improving existing ones and fixing bugs.
What’s new?
The first major difference is that you now have the option to run openLCA in seven different languages: English (default), Bulgarian, Chinese, French, German, Italian and Spanish. Simply open the software, select a language under File –> Preferences –> Configuration and then restart the program. Secondly, we are happy to announce that version 1.4.1 now supports the possibility to run Python and JavaScript programs directly in openLCA. This feature can be a very powerful tool to automate calculations in openLCA, write your own data imports or exports, perform sensitivity analysis calculations by varying parameter values, and much more. The third major change is the extensive additions and improvements to openLCA’s “Project” feature. In the project setup tab you can now select a normalization and weighting set, impact categories and specify processes to find out their direct contributions. Plus, you can configure your own report by adding report sections, descriptions and selecting visual components you would like to have displayed in the report.
Next to these bigger changes, other useful improvements include:
– Copy and paste support for tables. You can copy the content of every table to the clipboard and paste it to Excel or other spreadsheet software.
– Improved performance for migrating databases (to find out how to migrate ecoinvent 3.1 databases, see this video).
– ILCD support for external source documents (when you import/export in ILCD format the external documents such as PDFs, documents, pictures, etc. will be imported/ exported as well).
– Error in “Grouping” function has been remedied (it was not possible to save groups)
A few other additions since the openLCA release that are not in the software itself include:
– two new case studies are now available for openLCA v1.4 (available here)
– the ecoinvent LCIA methods are now available for openLCA in openLCA Nexus
– the Cumulative Energy Demand (CED) impact assessment method is now included in the LCIA method pack (available here)
To find out more about changes and bug fixes since v1.4.0 see also our README files in Sourceforge, here. All of the software changes mentioned here were carried out by the GreenDelta Team in Berlin. We would like to thank all of those who supported openLCA development in 2014, and of course those who took their time to provide the translations. We have a lot of developments planned for 2015 that we look forward to working on.
How do I get the latest version?
Version 1.4.1 is available at the openLCA downloads website. You can de-install your older version (i.e. 1.4) before installing 1.4.1 (your databases will not be affected), and then install the latest version. To do so, click on the button for the version of the software you would like to install. After the file has been downloaded, open up the file in your downloads folder. Then select the install language (English or German) and follow the steps of the installer wizard.
Free webinar on v1.4.1
We will give a free webinar “what’s new in openLCA 1.4-1” on Friday, February 27th 2015, 2pm CET. To register, please send an email to training@greendelta.com, with keyword ‘register for Feb 27′ – many thanks.
To keep up with what’s new in openLCA you can follow our news feed, twitter or join the openLCA linkedin group.
If you have any questions or feedback, please let us know.