Documentation
Contents
The professional documentation tool of FEM-Design has been expanded with several new features, enabling faster, easier and more customizable creation of calculation and design reports with uniquely tailored content.
New title block fields
New automatic text types (Fields; Draw menu) have been introduced for use in title block objects (e.g., headers and footers), with values dynamically derived from the current report.
Chapter titles
Title blocks can now display the number and/or title of the first-level (main) chapter applicable to the current report page. This enhancement allows for easier navigation and clearer context within multi-page reports by indicating the main chapter relevant to each page.
Current/all pages
The new “Current/all pages” field allows us to display the current page number and total page count as a single data item. This significantly streamlines the process of adding page numbering to reports, compared to the previous method where we had to insert “Current page”, “Number of pages” and a separating “/” character in three separate steps.
Chapter improvements
FEM-Design 24 introduces enhanced options for positioning and customizing chapter titles, making reports more organized and visually appealing.
Start at new page
We can now specify whether chapters always start on a new page or continue on the same page. This can be set:
- individually for each chapter through its properties, or
- as a default setting for the entire report, applied by chapter level.
Setting for individual chapters:
Setting as a default for the whole report:
Customizable title colours
Chapter titles can now be personalized with custom colors. This flexibility is available:
- individually for each chapter through its properties, or
- as a default setting for the entire report, applied by chapter level.
Setting for individual chapters:
Setting as a default for the whole report:
Graphical window improvements
Dimensioning within Graphical windows
Graphical windows in FEM-Design enable the creation of documentation illustrations that display the analytical model or its parts, complete with design data or results, in customizable viewpoints and display settings.
With FEM-Design 24, dimension lines can now be defined and displayed directly within documentation. The Dimensioning tool (Draw menu) is accessible in Graphical windows, enabling us to enhance illustrations with precise measurements and technical details.
Automatic zoom to margin
Graphical windows display live model content, which is often viewed either in its entirety or zoomed in on specific details. For cases where the full extent of the content needs to be visible regardless of window size changes, the new Automatically zoom to margin option provides an efficient solution. This feature can be activated for any graphical window, ensuring that the full content always fits within the visible area.
Thanks to this option and the live nature of the graphics window content, any model changes — such as redesigns, expansions, or changing object visibility — are automatically adjusted to display the entire updated model in the graphics window.
If a modification (e.g. manual zooming in or out) is made to the current view of a graphics window where the Automatic zoom to margin option is active, the option will be deactivated.
In cases where the Automatically Zoom to Margin option is enabled for graphical windows in a documentation template, any automatically generated documentation based on the template will produce images (graphical windows) where all content is fully visible. This eliminates the need for manual adjustments to display new content that fits the margin.
Lock aspect ratio when resizing graphical windows
A new feature simplifies maintaining the aspect ratio of graphical windows within documentation. To preserve the original aspect ratio during resizing, simply hold the Shift key while dragging a corner or edge of the graphical window.
Thanks to the newly introduced Automatically zoom to margin option (link!!!), the entire visible content will always be displayed within the resized “image” boundaries.
Table improvements
Listing applied codes
A new feature allows us to create a standalone table in our documentation that lists the names of the design codes applied in the current project calculations. This clear summary ensures better transparency and reference for design and compliance purposes.
Listing object types
It is now possible to document end release, support, and connection types as structural data in table format.
The image below demonstrates constraint types of an analytical model placed as tables in documentation.
Thanks to the new “type”-listing function, previously complex tables with dense content, e.g. the list of all data of line connections (see “Table 1”), can be divided into just a list of types of objects (see “Table 2”) and a list of the characteristics of the types (see “Table 3”).
This approach improves readability and produces shorter documentation, because a type can be referenced by multiple objects, and there is no need to duplicate type-specific details for each object.
Custom table titles
The title definition for tables in the documentation has been expanded with two new options in addition to the previously used automatic generation (based on table type and content):
- We can now manually assign custom titles to tables.
- It is also possible to combine the automatically generated title with custom text for a hybrid solution.
These improvements offer greater flexibility and control over how tables are presented in documentation, making it easier to align with project-specific or organizational standards.
Examples:
- Fully automatically generated table title
- Custom table title
- Combined table title
