Build 1617

September 23rd, 2025

New Geomechanics module

The new Geomechanics add-on introduces a dedicated workspace within WellCAD, featuring specialized workflows that support calculating rock mechanical properties, estimating in-situ stress magnitudes, building mechanical earth models, and assessing formation stability. These workflows integrate seamlessly with your log data and are built upon peer-reviewed methodologies and industry-standard geomechanical practices.

The Geomechanics add-on in WellCAD focuses on the following sections:

• Density and Sonic Velocity Estimations: Estimate missing or incomplete bulk density, compressional wave (P-wave), and shear wave (S-wave) velocities using a library of empirical equations, calibrated by lithology. These estimations are critical when direct logs are unavailable or noisy, and are often used as inputs for elastic moduli, stress models, and rock strength correlations.
• Rock Mechanics: Estimate essential rock strength and elastic parameters using well logs and core-derived values. (e.g., UCS, tensile strength, elastic moduli) from logs and lab data.
• Determination of Pore Pressure. Pore pressure refers to the pressure exerted by fluids within the pores of a rock formation. Understanding and accurately determining pore pressure is essential for safe and efficient well planning.
• Determination of Stress Magnitudes: Determine in-situ vertical and horizontal stresses using integrated density logs, sonic-derived elastic properties, and user-defined parameters (e.g., Poisson’s ratio, Biot coefficient). The module supports both vertical stress from density integration, minimum and maximum horizontal stress magnitudes using poroelastic equations.
• Fracture Stability: Evaluate the risk of rock failure using Mohr-Coulomb criteria, applied continuously along the wellbore.
• It is also possible to access the different geomechanical parameters and methods as individual processes from the Process menu.

New Spider and Box plots

Two new chart types – Spider and Box plots (also known a Box & Whisker plots) – have been added to the Chart log. Both chart types are also supported in the borehole document header and can be added and edited using the Header Editor.

Assorted features in the Basic module

• Status Bar: Details, such as depth, number of data or sampling rate, of the currently selected (single) log will now be shown in the status bar.
• Formula Log: An increased font size and syntax highlighting is now supported by the formula parser. It will make the composition and edition of formulas more user friendly. The position of Syntax errors will be indicated by a tool-tip.
• Chart Log: Pie charts will account for data gaps when calculating the proportions and a category named Emptywill show the percentage of missing data. A new Normalize option has been added to the log properties to ignore missing intervals and normalize the volumes to add up to 100% (exceptions are log types which support overlapping intervals like the CoreDesc and classified Interval logs). An option to adjust the font style for labels and legends has also been added.
• Chart Log: Support for classified logs (Well and Interval logs) has been added for Pie charts.
• Strata Log: A new option has been added to the log properties allowing the user to specify whether the Code, the Description or a combination of Code and Description of the selected pattern is used as label.
• Lithology log (and log types using pattern dictionaries): When editing a pattern dictionary in-place, a change of the pattern code will automatically trigger a replacement of the old code in the log’s data table.
• Multiple File Import: A warning message will be displayed when the user selects too many files exceeding the file name buffer (e.g. when attempting to import a large number of core images).
• File Import: The preview display of the Text File Import dialog box has been improved to display larger quantities of data column more clearly.
• Page Settings: The dialog box has been re-designed and new options have been added to define the depth interval (s) to be printed.
• Annotations: An option has been added to the Bitmap Annotation properties to maintain their aspect ratio.

Assorted features for Header / Footer design

• Labels and dynamic text fields can now be added to a header by dragging and dropping selected rows from the Metadata bar into the Header Editor window.
• An option to maintain the aspect ratio has been added to the properties of the Bitmap item.
• Chart items (pie, spider, box, ternary, …) support user defined depth intervals now.

Assorted features in the ISI module

• Structure, Breakout and Lineation logs: When editing a classification dictionary in-place, a change of the code for a classification attribute will automatically trigger a replacement of the old code in the log’s data table.
• Structure log: A new option -Display nodes – to toggle the display of nodes has been added to the default settings (Tools > Options).
• 3D Log: When selecting the Structure – and / or Lineation Component in the log properties the user can also choose the structure types that should be displayed (e.g. only open fractures, no bedding) as an overlay to the 3D log.
• Polar & Rose log: The structure types displayed in node and branch distribution diagrams can now be grouped. Rather than displaying an individual symbol for each fracture type, multiple types (e.g. minor, intermediate and major fractures) can be combined and displayed as a single group.
• ISI workspace: The display of nodes has been added to the ISI workspace along with a filter to choose the structure class for which the nodes are displayed.
• ISI workspace: The statistics displayed in the legend table of stereonet and rose diagrams can now be exported when right clicking on the table.
• New Fracture Length process: A new process to calculate the fracture length ratio – the ratio between the length of the actual fracture trace represented by the sinusoid and the circumference of the borehole in the fracture plane – has been added to the ISI Module > Structure Logs menu.

Bug fixes

• Median and weighted average filters work now properly when the circular data option has been selected.
• WellCAD no longer closes unexpectedly when merging FWS logs while the Waveform viewer is open.
• The feature depth of apparent to true corrected partial picks (tadpoles) is now correctly displayed in the ISI workspace.
• Depth units are now correctly displayed and handled in the LAS file import dialog box.
• All quartiles calculated using the Interval Statistics process are now output as Interval logs.
• Engineering log: A transparency problem when displaying equipment items (e.g. casing shoe, casing centralizer) has been solved.
• The default positions for newly inserted Polar & Rose logs are correctly applied now.