Open STAAD to gather connection design data?

[MrStohler]

I'm looking for some feedback about the use of "Open STAAD". I will probably attempt to write a macro (is that the correct term?) to gather data from the STAAD output.

EXAMPLE: At a brace connection design, for the load combinations that correspond to the max & min brace loads, we would like to gather the corresponding reactions of the members also connected to that joint.

Is this practical with Open STAAD? We currently perform this task manually, by scrolling through the load combinations for the max & min then looking up the info for the other members (we only do this if use of the envelope loads yields an unreasonably large connection)

Thanks

 

[fleisher]

Sure. Our engineers here have several macros (I don't know how to write one) that retrieve a ton of info from their outputs. An OpenSTAAD manual is included with your installation. If you are planning to use Excel, I would suggest opening the XLS file in the OpenSTAAD directory and playing around with that to see how it works. That's how our guys learned.