It has been quite a while since I last released a version of AequilibraE, but a new one just hit the QGIS repository. The long time between releases was initially due to an attempt to include select link analysis in the assignment, but a LOT happened in the meantime, and although this version still does not have the select link analysis, it comes with many other very exciting features.

The first exciting new feature is the ability to make Delaunay lines with a much wider range of values for zone IDs, which do NOT have to be sequential anymore. IDs with up to 9 digits should work fine in most machines (8 digits should work easily in 32 bit operating systems), and ion high-end machines (lots of memory), you should be able to go to up to 10 or 11 digits IDs.

The second major change (and by far the most exciting) is the introduction of TranspoNet, which is the ability of AequilibraE to build a network (links plus nodes) that keeps links and nodes consistent as you edit them, making it the first data-side network editing tool available, and the only platform-independent network editing tool. This tool is so important that I will actually write about it on an exclusive post, but I couldn’t avoid to give you some taste of it. It is important to note, however, that the actual code for TranspoNet is being brilliantly written by Andrew O’Brien.

This version of AequilibraE also brings a bunch of minor changes, most of them consequence of me learning more about software development and specifics about Python and QGIS. A few examples of these changes are:

  • Tab sequence on the GUI is now correct on all interfaces, so it is easier to work with the mouse
  • ALL GUI are read straight from its *.ui form (no more compiling needed). Kudos to Andrew O’Brien for showing me how to do it. This keeps the AequilibraE experience much more consistent across platforms
  • Reporting is introduced in several procedures
  • Lowest Common Denominator tool for Overlay analysis with Polygons now returns complete datasets (common areas and non-common areas) and has better user messaging, which is relevant for very large analysis
  • Link flows and path files can now be saved as SQLite (path files take a VERY long time to be written to SQLite)
  • Matrices can now be loaded as memory-mapped arrays to save memory
  • Uniformization of procedure and interface to search for folder and file outputs