When you use IES tools it appears that you are working, when in fact, you are playing: creating and producing wonderful designs, resulting in the appearance of actual work.
June 2006 a newsletter for IES customers and friends Volume 12.6

Masonry Upgrade in July

QuickMasonry will be reinforced, IES customers will be strengthened

Last December IES released QuickMasonry 1.0: design software for various types of masonry components. Due to the popularity of this new package and a flood of positive suggestions, we are nearing completion on a free upgrade. Here is a sampling of the improvements in the forthcoming release:

  • Support for the new MSJC 2005 code
  • Support for strength design provisions
  • Support for clay masonry
  • New loading options
  • Improved support for seismic design
  • Improved user interface
  • More control options over design decisions

As with all products in the IES Quick Suite, QuickMasonry is very easy to learn and use and displays all calculations for review using our unique "Transparent Reporting" system. Watch for this upgrade to be released next month.

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If you have suggestions for this tool, please be sure to send them to IES Technical Support so that there will be time to incorporate your ideas into the next release. If you haven't yet tried QuickMasonry, see how it stacks up today!

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Wind Loads Coming Soon

VA 6.0 Preview 1: Wind Loads & More...

Pressure. It's what we live in. It's what we live with. Wind pressure is something that can control the design of many structures we design every day. Beginning with VisualAnalysis 6.0 you will have the ability to directly create and apply wind pressures to your structural models. IES engineers are pushing the envelope of high-technology wind loading by implementing the ASCE 7-05 wind load provisions. Last month we were ranting about how ugly and unusable the code provisions are, but this month we have decided to take the high road.

The High Road

In the forthcoming VisualAnalysis 6.0 we are trying to create a system that gives you the power to deal with the code provisions as you see fit. We are not going to force anything on you and we are not going to create an over-simplified wind loading system that does not permit you to correctly model the behavior of your structures. Some of the products on the market require you to use rigid diaphragms to apply wind loads, they do not handle pressures on the envelope and they cannot automate roof pressures per ASCE 7. VisualAnalysis 6.0 will help you harness the wind provisions, while staying true to behavior and helping you stay organized and efficient.

Irregular areas can be defined for pressure loading purposes in VA 6. Click for larger image.

Area Loads

Wind loads are not the only pressures we must apply to our models, though, and VisualAnalysis 6.0 will be making it easier for you to model floor loads and roof loads due to occupancy, snow, and other sources.

IES is implementing a powerful set of features to streamline your work and also to help make the software smarter about the models you are creating. Areas and area loads will be introduced to make it nearly trivial to distribute floor loading to your frames as well as wind loads on the building envelope. Area loads will automatically distribute to the members and plates in your model, similar to but much improved over the current Member Load Generator tool in VisualTools.

Graphical Tools

Coupled with the area loads are some powerful new graphical capabilities to help you visualize the model and isolate the components you are working with. IES engineers are patterning the graphical system after popular engineering CAD packages and similar tools so that they will be immediately familiar and intuitive for customers. The old Model View with it's optical illusions and limitations has been replaced in the VA 6 Lab with a rendered ("Picture View" like) system, but one that is fast, flexible and robust.

The model and result views are much cleaner, with better graphics in VA6. Click for larger image.

Jet Stream Design

To top-off the new system, IES is rethinking the procedures you need to follow to design your structure and we are introducing some project-wide design criteria settings to help automate the entire design process. By gathering a few key pieces of information from you at the start of the project, VisualAnalysis will be able to setup intelligent defaults and automate some of the tedious work that has been required in previous releases.

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Contents

Archive CDs Available

Stay Back in Time, If you like

Windows 98 still powering your old machine? Perhaps you are also using VisualAnalysis 4.0, ShapeBuilder 3.0, or AnalysisGroup 2.0! IES now considers these to be 'dead' products. They are no longer actively supported, and you cannot update them from our web site.

Other products, like VisualAnalysis 5.1 are still actively supported, but are no longer available on our web site for updates or downloads as they were replaced more than a year ago with upgrade versions.

Good Old Days

The good news is, that those old products often are enough for you to get your job done, even if they don't have all the cool new features of our current products. After all, let's face it, structural design is not quite as trendy as, say, fashion design. Analysis 1994 = Analysis 2006, for the most part. And the sum of the forces still equals zero.

Supported, Sort Of

However, if you are using one of these obsolete products, you have not been completely abandoned by IES. Should you need support, you can still email us to ask a question, just don't expect a bug-fix. If you need to re-install the product, say on a Windows XP machine, you will probably want to make sure you have the latest release available, especially for VisualAnalysis 4.0, which had some XP "issues" before we fixed them!

Warning: IES does not support or condone the use of VisualAnalysis 5.0 with VisualDesign 4.01, this was a potentially 'bad' combination of products! If you have this system we strongly encourage you to upgrade.

Archive CD for VA4, SB3, AG2 product versions.

Newest Old Release?

If you have a license for an older version of IES software and want to obtain the latest update for installation and archive purposes, we have an archive CD available for $25 to cover materials, shipping, and handling. Order this CD on-line.

If you want an archive floppy disk, we might have a few of those around as well. And don't worry, we won't even say: "Hey, get with the 90's man!"

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A Little Something

Have a nice day!


Success is sweet,
but it smells like sweat.
-Anonymous

Correction does much,

but encouragement does more.

-Goethe

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Latest Updates

No Hassles, Just Fixes

How do you know if you have the latest updates? Try the Help | iesweb.com | Update... menu. Our latest products will tell you if there is a new update available. If you suppress the message, you won't see it again for two weeks.

Recent Updates:

AnalysisGroup 3.00.0006 (June 8th)

VisualAnalysis 5.50.0017 (May 19th)

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