A variety of support types can be modeled in Slide including soil nails, tiebacks, geotextiles, micropiles and user-defined support. For each support type, the user may choose the method of force application: Active or Passive. (Slide 6.015, 01/2012)

The slope angle editing tool available in both Slide and Phase² allows you to easily change the overall slope angle of benched slopes. You can carry out a sensitivity analysis of slope angle versus factor of safety in order to optimize the slope angle for complex slopes such as open pit mines. (Slide 6.012, 07/11)

These examples demonstrate the transient finite element groundwater seepage analysis available in Slide 6.0. In the first example, an earth dam model is constructed with an initial dry state. The reservoir is then filled and the progress of the water table with time is observed. (Slide 6.003, 06/10)

When the water level at a dam drops, the stabilizing force due to the weight of the water is removed. If the dam material has a low permeability and the water level drops quickly, then excess pore pressures will be slow to dissipate. This causes reduced stability in the slope. This tutorial describes how to use Slide to model rapid drawdown and examine the effect on dam stability and factor of safety. (Slide 6.003, 06/10)

A new boundary simplification option has been added to both Slide and Phase². Utilizing the Douglas-Peucker line simplification algorithm, a polyline with a large number of verticies can now be simplified to a polyline with far fewer vertices and with little loss in accuracy. (Slide 5.038, 12/08)

In Phase² 7.0, you can now export a Slide data file at any stage of the Phase² model. Simply select the desired stage and use the Export Slide option. The export engine supports finite-element groundwater analysis, ponded water, all Phase² bolt models, Mohr-Coulomb and Hoek-Brown material types and other modeling features. (Slide 5.036, 09/08)

A common modeling mistake is to define a water table (or piezometric line) which does not span the extent of all materials for which it is intended to calculate the pore pressure. When this occurs, Slide will NOT calculate a safety factor for any slip surfaces where the pore pressure is undefined. This Developer’s Tip describes how this problem may occur, and how to detect and avoid this modeling pitfall. (Slide 5.027, 10/06)

This Developer’s Tip shows how to export the strength data for a simple slope from Phase² into Slide. (Slide 5.025, 06/06)

The latest update to Slide 5.0 brings a number of improvements related to printing functionality, giving the user greater control over printed output. Users have the option of printing the model exactly as shown on screen, or to a specific scale. This article demonstrates the use of the new Print to Scale feature. (Slide 5.029, 04/07)

This tutorial demonstrates how to use the Optimize Surface Option in Slide 5.0. This option allows users to search for critical slip surfaces. As a starting point, it can employ a user-defined surface, or surfaces generated by a Block Search or Path Search. (Slide 5.013, 07/04)

By popular demand, an important new feature has been added to the latest Slide upgrade - the calculation of Excess Pore Pressure due to undrained loading, using the so-called "B-bar" method. This feature allows you to account for short-term (transient) changes in pore pressure due to rapidly applied loading conditions. (Slide 5.010, 04/04)

The conversion of principal stresses to shear-normal stresses is computationally intensive. This considerably slows down slope stability analysis involving Generalized Hoek-Brown materials. Fortunately, in Slide, it is possible to significantly improve the computational speed of such analyses through combined use of the program's Shear/Normal strength function and the free Rocscience program RocLab. This program allows users to easily determine Hoek-Brown and Mohr-Coulomb strength parameters of rockmasses and intact rock samples. (Slide 5.03, 06/03)

This movie demonstrates how to perform a sensitivity analysis in Slide. It takes an existing model and examines the sensitivity of the factor of safety to changes in cohesion, friction angle and unit weight of the material. The movie uses a simple model with one material (tutorial1, from the Examples folder), but it also explains what additional steps would be required if the model had multiple types of materials. (Slide 5.03, 06/03)

Given a required factor of safety, Slide will now compute the reinforcement load to achieve that factor of safety for all surfaces analyzed. Whether you are required to design for a particular factor of safety or you would simply like a good starting point for your support design, you will find Slide's new back analysis feature saves you lots of time. Read more about Back Analysis. (Slide 5.003, 06/03)

You can fully annotate a Slide model with just a few clicks of the mouse. This movie demonstrates adding horizontal and vertical dimensions, formatting dimensions, using Favourite Text to automatically add material names and coordinates, and setting various display options to achieve high quality printed output. (Slide 5.00, 03/03)

A new groundwater/seepage analysis module has been built into version 5.0 of Slide. The groundwater module uses a finite element formulation for modelling saturated and unsaturated steady-state flow. The distinctive feature of this new module is that it performs groundwater analysis on the same model used for slope stability analysis. The pore water pressures calculated from the new module can be automatically included in analyses by the slope stability engine in Slide. This means that with Slide, a model needs to be built only once; it is directly used for both groundwater and slope stability analysis.(Slide 4.002, 04/02)

Take full advantage of the wide range of search methods and techniques in Slide 4.0 - make sure that your most critical slip surfaces are always located. This tutorial identifies related problems and issues that may be encountered by users and discusses ways in which to improve or correct searching techniques. (Slide 4.002, 04/02)