|
|
|
|
|
The program now allows you to specify that groups of walls with unknown parameters wind up with the same material specification after design. The program designs the wall for the most heavily loaded wall in the group.
For example, all interior walls on a certain level, or all exterior walls in the structure, can be specified to be the same. Previously such walls would often have slightly different material specifications, which is not usually practical for construction.
Standard Walls
The program uses the existing Standard Wall mechanism for this feature. You are able to indicate which standard wall groups are to be designed as a group, and within the standard wall group, which walls are to be included in the group design. It may be necessary therefore to make more standard wall groups than were previously used to make default walls.
For example, if you had a Standard Wall called Exterior Shearwalls that was used as a starting point for design of all exterior walls, but want the same set of wall materials to be designed on each story of the structure, but possibly lighter walls on the upper storeys, then you would make 4 new groups called Exterior Shearwalls Lev 1, Exterior Shearwalls Lev 2, etc.
Design as/in Group Input
A checkbox has been added to the Standard Wall input called Design as a group and in the regular wall input mode called Design in group . The checkbox in the standard wall mode means that all the walls of that standard wall that also have the checkbox checked will be designed as a group in the sense that they will wind up with identical materials after design. Those individual walls that do not have the checkbox checked are treated as if they were not part of a standard wall group. Those standard walls that do not have the checkbox checked function as current standard walls, that is, as default walls only.
Default Setting
The standard wall checkbox will default to being checked if a new standard wall is made. The standard walls shipped with the program will have the checkbox checked by default.
Updates
If you uncheck the Design as a group check box for a standard wall, then all the checkboxes for walls of that group are unchecked and disabled. If you check a standard wall box that had been unchecked, then all of the standard walls in the program are be checked and enabled.
If the you select a Standard Wall for an individual wall when previously it had a different standard wall or no standard wall, then the individual wall’s checkbox will be checked and enabled if the standard wall box is checked. If it is not, it is unchecked and disabled.
If you change a wall so that it becomes identical to a standard wall and then becomes one of those standard walls, the checkbox will be unchecked regardless of whether the standard wall Design as Group checkbox is checked or unchecked, but it will still be enabled. This is because the wall was not made a standard wall deliberately, so you are unlikely to want it to be grouped with those walls for design.
Default Walls
When walls are made in the program using standard walls, then the individual wall’s checkbox will be checked and enabled if the standard wall box is checked. If it is not, it will be unchecked and disabled.
Standard Wall Deletion
If you delete a standard wall, then the program goes through all the walls that had been that standard wall, and unchecks Design in group
Previous Versions
Walls from existing files from versions before the feature was implemented have their individual wall Design in group checkbox unchecked by default.
Wall Attributes
Previously, when attributes such as materials or wall type were changed for individual walls, the wall would no longer be identified as being a standard wall. If standard walls are changed, then all the walls that were created with that wall were not identified with that standard wall. For those standard walls designed as groups, this has changed, and membership in the standard wall group persists through material changes.
Change of Wall Attribute
If you change an attribute of a wall that is currently one of a standard wall group, and both the standard wall and the individual wall are to be part of a design group, then the program will issue a warning saying “All walls of the [standard wall group] will also have the selected change.” There is a “Don’t show this box again checkbox in the message to allow you to avoid having the box appear repeatedly.
If you don’t want the attribute to change for all walls in the group, then just change it back to what it was and deselect the Design in Group box for those walls you do not want to change.
If you change an attribute of a wall that is a standard wall but does not have the Design as Group checkbox checked, then the program will allow the change with no message and in most cases it will cause the wall to no longer be part of the standard wall group. No other walls will receive the change.
Change of Standard Wall Attribute
If you change at least one attribute of a wall that has the Design as Group box checked, when exiting the box, the same message as for individual walls appears, saying all members of the Standard Wall group will receive the change, allowing you to suppress further instances of the message.
If the Design as Group box is not checked, then a change in wall attributes will cause all the walls that were previously one of the standard walls to no longer a standard wall, as the program currently behaves.
Multiple Standard Walls with Same Materials
Previously, the program would not allow you to create more than one standard wall with the same material specification. For those standard walls that are designed as a group, this restriction has been relaxed in order that you can use for example the same material specification with unknowns that become different wall specifications when the unknowns are determined by the program in order to meet design requirements.
For example, you can have different standard wall groups on each floor of the building, each with the identical materials when unknowns are included, which however become different walls when the program designs for the different loading scenarios on each floor.
Automatic Identification of Standard Wall Group
Currently, if the program identifies that a change in a wall makes it identical to a standard wall, it assigns it to that standard wall. If you have multiple standard walls with the same specification, it randomly chooses which of these standard walls to assign the wall to. This has little impact, because the Design in group is unchecked in this case. You can manually change the standard wall the wall is associated with and check Design in Group if you want it to be grouped with a different wall.
Standard Wall File Synchronization
When a file is saved with standard wall groups, and the standard wall definitions are later changed, or standard walls are deleted, while in another project, and the original file is opened up again, some of the grouped walls have no standard wall associated with them.
If this happens, new standard walls are created with the materials from the grouped walls, and given names Std Wall 1, Std Wall 2, etc. These walls are later saved as standard walls that can be opened with any project. Toc can then either delete them, rename them, or reconcile them with the changed standard walls that were originally used to create them.
Design Procedure
After the design iterations, and before the final design check, the program compares the design capacities of all walls in a group. I then the materials of the wall with the highest capacity to all the walls in the group, then recalculates the wall deflections, redistributes loads to the walls, and outputs design tables for the new walls.
Design Failure
It is possible for the new load distribution to create a situation that the critical wall in the design group might elsewhere fail elsewhere on the structure where a weaker wall had passed. When this happens, a warning appears in the Shear Design table of the output. The existing warning that appears when this occurs for other reasons has been reworded to reflect this possibility,
Wall Grouping
The existing system of comparing all the designed walls to establish design groups with identical materials, which are identified by numbers, has been retained. The fact that walls within a Standard Wall group will have the same materials cause them to be grouped with the same group number.
Walls that are not part of Standard Wall groups are also grouped and assigned group numbers as they currently are.
Accept Design
Changes have been made to the recently added Accept Design feature because there are no longer separate designs for wind and seismic, so the choices in the selection menu are now just Rigid Diaphragm and Flexible Diaphragm” rather then Rigid, Wind, etc.
The sub-submenu item has been changed to say Accept from Accept Design. .
When you have activated the worst-case Rigid and Flexible feature, , both Rigid and Flexible are checked but disabled, and the Accept item is the only one that is enabled.
Output
FRAMING MATERIALS by WALL GROUP Table
The name of the Standard Wall associated with a wall group, if there is one, is included in a column that has been added to this table. It is possible that more than one Standard Wall yields the same materials when designed; in that case the line is repeated with the same group number. If there is no Standard wall associated with the group number because it came from walls that were not grouped, the line appears blank.
The table has been renamed accordingly to FRAMING MATERIALS and STANDARD WALL by WALL GROUP.
SHEAR DESIGN Table
A hat symbol (^) appears beside the wall group number for the wall that is critical for that group, that is, the wall that had the heaviest loading and for which the wall materials designed were used for all other walls in that group.
The legend has been modified to explain this and to refer to Standard Wall groups.
SHEARLINE, WALL and OPENING DIMENSIONS Table
The legend has been modified to refer to Standard Wall groups.
DEFLECTION Table
The legend has been modified to refer to Standard Wall groups.