Abstract:Simplicity is the important principle for software development. Based on the idea of simplicity and creativity,the software named ZSlope was developed by author for slope stability analysis,which is made up of pre-processor,post-processor,and solver. By the routine stability analysis for slope adopted by ZSlope,some conclusions can be reached. (1) The results of critical slide surface obtained by using golden section methods or conventional optimization methods are often lack of credibility,for they are apt to fall into local limit,while the method of exhaustion can overcome the shortcoming to some degree. (2) There is not a single slide surface corresponding to a certain safe factor,but a cluster of slide surfaces which forms a slide strip with width.