Structural Design and analysis FE softwares 1

[dcceecy]

I am going to design a 2-story office steel buidling (probably moment frame, colum base may be designed as fixed).

I am wondering if there is a FE software can design the steel building frame (column, beam), base plate, anchor bolts, concrete footing for columns, and check the soil bearing capacity under footing? So I do not have to use one software for column & beam, and use another one for footing or anchor bolts.

Any suggestions? Thanks.

 

[JAE]

Ram
RISA
ROBOT
Staad

There's quite a few out there.

 

[ToadJones]

I'd just design the frame in software and the footings with spreadsheets or by hand. Doesn't sound like an overly huge project.

 

[dcceecy]

Thank you for your reply
Can Visual Analysis do that?

 

[dcceecy]

It's not a big deal if the building is simple. But if you need to design the anchor bolts with ACI318 Appendix D, check the bending of base plate, check the concrete footing for puchshear, flexure..(LRFD), check the soil bearing capacity (ASD). Good luck to transfer the loads of column (may be more than 20 column) from one software to another.
if something changed (always), ...

 

[SethGuthrie]

Using RAM Structural System (Steel, Frame and Foundation) in conjunction with RAM Connection for the Base Plate design would be cover everything you are looking for. It is two application to install, but the integration is tight.

 

[JoshPlumSE]

RISA-3D will do a good job on the steel frame. You can check out the Demo version of the sofware to see if it suits your needs. It's a fully working demo, it just limits what you can print or size of the model you can save. In the Demo, you won't get some of the multi-program integration features (such as the RISAFoot integration described below). But, you should be able to see if the program will suit your needs.

http://www.risatech.com/forms/demo_request.html

If you also have RISAFoot, then you can analyze and "design" your footings directly from within RISA-3D. The base plates and anchor bolts can be done from within RISABase. Though that is not directly integrated with RISA-3D. You can also download demo versions of these smaller programs. They just won't integrate with 3D and they will have some weird material limitations (like an Fy of 20ksi for the base plate) that prevent the program from being used for anything other than evaluation.

 

[UcfSE]

I use RAM Structural System most often for this kind of thing.

 

[TLHS]

I'd work out the loads from the superstructure, get the loads at each column, select typical groupings that I want different designs for (corner columns, edge, interior) and develop a loading envelope for each of them. Then design the substructure to take those loads. I feel like I have a much better understanding of the loads paths and control of how I want things to act when I do it that way. It gets hard to set your boundary conditions to what you want them to be and make sure your assumptions are conservative for all cases when you're doing an entire structure as a single model.

It may just be that I don't have enough experience integrating my foundations into my structural model. I tend to only do it when I'm looking at large lateral loads being taken via bending in piles. Even then I'll mostly do that to get a better feeling for how the loads move around and will still design the substructure seperately once I've worked that out.

 

[abusementpark]

Use RAM Structural System. Great program.

 

[spats]

Count me as a RAM fan. I remember years ago when RAM first came out, and the structural engineer working for the building department (jerkwater in Ft. Lauderdale) would not accept RAM since he never heard of it. He made us provide extensive program documentation, and ultimately required us to reanalize and redesign the building using ETABS. The program is intuitive and well organized. Whenever I thought I had a problem with the results, the helpful staff at RAM International were always able to point me to the error of my ways. It's now a Bentley program (STAAD, etc.), but they are a top-notch organization, though not as hands-on as RAM International used to be... life goes on!

 

[dhengr]

It’s a darn shame..., if those programs could only do a few more things, you wouldn’t even have to go into the office. They would fetch the soils report and that kinda stuff. They would fill out your time card and have your check forwarded directly to your home or bank. And, with voice activation, the boss would just come in, in the morning, and say “design,” and out would come the perfect design, without a bunch of employees complaining about being underappreciated and underpaid.

 

[RFreund]

2-Story? How regular is the structure? Portal Frame and hand calcs prolly could finish by break time...

EIT

http://www.HowToEngineer.com

 

[spats]

dhengr - I'm trying to understand those who look for some kind of purity in structural engineering. I know I'm going against the norm when I say that innovation and technical advancement allow us to be free of the mudane. We can think more in terms of the structural system, and how it all works together, as opposed to some sort of purity in the structural art that requires us to analyze by hand.