Visualize This!
Seeing is Believing

VisualAnalysis has always been about clarity, simplicity, and quality. Version 5.5 is the result of customer suggestions as well as frustrations with our previous releases. We envisioned our task over the previous year as one of fixing the most annoying problems customers were experiencing as well as implementing solutions or improvements for the most exciting requested features.

The result this effort is now available for free-trial and for production work. It has been tested, and retested, and beta tested. It is not perfect, by any means, but it is "good enough" to be much better than version 5.1 and orders of magnitude better than 4.0.

An Overview, A Glimpse

Physical Members or Combined Members introduced in 5.0 are now automatic and very handy! You can combine member elements into a single "combined" member for editing, viewing, and reporting, while internally the finite element analysis "sees" the individual elements. You can now split a combined member, and perform other operations that were impossible before. Makes modeling much simpler.

Automatic K Factors are now calculated for you. This is a real time saver for the design of columns in steel, wood, or concrete. Of course you can override the values if you have better ones.

Engineered Wood Design: LVL and PSL and more. Design structural composite lumber shapes with VisualDesign. Use the Shape Database Editor (now shipping with ShapeBuilder 4.0) to add any specific manufactured shapes you need.

Achieve higher quality presentations with a completely overhauled Picture View. Cool new zoom and pan features, faster rotations, and it now supports selection and editing of model objects. Now you can check and correct member orientation errors visually! The printed window is also much more attractive making your reports shine for clients.

Read All about VisualAnalysis 5.5

There is so much more. Literally dozens of new features, hundreds of minor improvements and fixes. We have an upgrade guide available when you install the free trial. Or you can read it on the web site along with a more complete list of new features.

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Upgrade FAQs
Answers to Questions about VisualAnalysis 5.5

Q. How much is the upgrade to VA5.5?

A. Upgrade prices range are low:

Q. How do I know which products I have?

A. Go to the Help | About VisualAnalysis menu item. It will list one or more of the following in addition to VisualAnalysis {Basic, Standard, or Advanced}:

• VisualDesign
• VisualTools
• Moving Load Tool

You license the "VisualAnalysis Package" if you already have a license for VisualDesign.

Q. Can I still run VA 4.x or VA 5.1?

A. Yes! We install these products in different folders and they all use their own files where necessary. They do share some data files in IESCommonFiles, where the format or information has not changed. For the most part the systems are independent and compatible.

Q. Will VA5.5 open my old project files?

A. Yes, in theory. We have tested with a number of different projects and the 'critical information' is guaranteed to migrate from old projects. There have been many low-level improvements in both file-format and data, so there may be a few items you need to 'reset' or adjust. If you have any major problems, send the project file to us and we will correct the problem in the way the software imports old projects.

Q. Can I save from VA5.5 to an older format?

A. Yes, VisualAnalysis, can save to VA5.1 format. The 'critical information' only is saved (no results or window layout). This is primarily provided for emergency use if there is some problem during the 'transition period', or to exchange a file with someone who does not have the latest release. Again, if you experience any problems, notify technical support as we have not tested all possible configurations, but we will work on any problems as they are discovered.

Q. New releases always seem 'buggy' is this one different?

A. Yes, we hope so, but we won't know for certain until hundreds or thousands of engineers start using it on a daily basis. We have tested this release more than any other previous release, and built upon ten years of experience and proven product technology. We have also "tightened the screws" on our procedures, used the best compilers, debuggers, and code-checking utilities available. We have instrumented this new release with automatic crash reporting technology, so that if it does crash, the software will automatically 'report home' so that IES engineers will know about the problems quickly.

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