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General Design

Last modified by Akos Rechtorisz on 2025/01/06 18:26

Contents

Deflection considered during automatic design of steel and timber bars

In many structural designs, especially for steel and timber members, the appropriate cross-sections are often determined by deflection rather than resistance or stability criteria. A new feature has been introduced in FEM-Design 24 to simplify the process, making it more efficient and accurate.

A new option called Consider deflection, if available has been added to the auto design settings for steel and timber bars. When enabled, and deflection utilization results are available for members, the automatic design process ignores cross-sections that are not suitable for deflection, according to an estimation based on the fact that deflection is inversely proportional to the inertia of the cross-section.

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To make the usage of this new functionality more convenient, a new option has been added to the Design calculations settings, allowing deflection checks to be easily requested before the design calculations.

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Improved Utilization dialog

The Utilization summary table in FEM-Design now offers enhanced sorting capabilities. Previously, sorting was limited to the group names and minimum/maximum utilization values. With FEM-Design 24, we can now organize the data according to the applied design parameters, enabling more tailored checks.

Examples of enhanced sorting:

  • Sorting steel bar utilizations by the applied cross-section names

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  • Sorting timber bar utilizations by the type of fire protection applied

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Renewed calculation/design parameter texts for bars

Calculation and design parameters are often displayed in the modelling space for visual verification and documentation of the applied settings. Their texts should be readable in their context, regardless of the size of the structural elements. Too much information can be distracting, extend beyond the dimensions of the element, and overlap with neighbouring elements. This problem is especially common for bars, where the total amount of setting data could exceed the length of the bar.

Therefore, in FEM-Design 24, redesigned texts with optimized content and font size are introduced for bars (concrete, composite, steel, and timber), listing only the major informative calculation and design settings (requested by users).

Examples of the renewed texts:

  • General calculation parameters of steel bars

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  • Fire design parameters of steel bars

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  • Lateral torsional buckling details for the top flanges of steel bars

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Notes:

  • The font style and size of textual information can be configured in the Design settings section of Quick tools. These settings can also be saved as defaults.
  • To display the required calculation or design data, ensure the corresponding object layers are active.

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