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"1D member & shear wall design" check is based on link between SCIA Engineer - ECtools. ECtools is the external tool developed by Penelis Software ltd. For communication of these two applications the data exchange interface has been developed. This fact causes some consequences and limitations that are not relevant to other internal SCIA Engineer checks but it is good to keep them on mind during the work with "1D member & shear wall design" check.
In current SCIA Engineer - ECtools solution the "Attributes" are used during modelling to distinguish whether the particular 2D member is during the ECtools design considered as the Shear wall or Coupling beam.
There is also the automatic-recognition algorithm, but if user wants to define the type manually, he should use the Attributes.
Attributes are already predefined in the template project. If the user wants to use these Attributes in existing projects he can:
name: ECtools
parameters:
Member type
name: Member type
type: Combo-box
Shear wall
Coupling beam
Shear wall name
name: Shear wall name
type: Text
ECtools do not use SCIA Engineer combinations by default. It creates its own code combinations. Coefficients of particular load cases are determined based on the load case type. Load case types are assigned in the ECtools dialogue during the "interaction mode" run.
If user wants to consider also SCIA Engineer combinations in the ECtools design calculation he must check the relevant "Include SCIA Engineer combinations" check-box in properties of 1D member & shear wall design check item. If this check-box is checked, ECtools consider also combinations included in 2 Result classes with specific names:
If you start the project using special "ECtools ACI project" template, these two Result classes are already predefined.
If you start new project not using this template or you would like to consider SCIA Engineer combinations for existing projects, you must define these Result classes manually.
The validity of ECtools output is managed by SCIA Engineer.
For example, if you change some parameter of ECtools design calculation (or something else that have influence to calculation), the current ECtools output become invalid and after pressing the related action button new ECtools design calculation is executed. If current ECtools output is valid for the set of calculation parameters (i.e since last ECtools calculation nothing that have influence to ECtools calculation has been changed), after related action button pressing the current output is just loaded without any ECtools design calculation.
The current ECtools output is considered to be valid if:
ECtools files are stored in the Temporary directory, e.g. C:\User\xxx\ESAxx.x\Temp\$001$000.ECtools\. Properties values are stored in Settings.etp and Calculation.set. Selection is stored in selection.dat.