Masonry Design²

Innovative Tool is Now Customer Driven!

When the engineers at IES produce a version 1.0 product, it is often somewhat of a guess. That is, we work hard to implement a tool that we think is what our customers will want. So while QuickMasonry 1.0 was a very exciting piece of software that met with an enthusiastic response, it left some customers craving more features. Version 2.0, with its dramatic improvements, will change that! IES engineers have made a great effort to listen to customers for the past year, making lists of features requested, complaints made, and implementing the latest MSJC code provisions to produce a design tool that is unmatched in the industry, and now customer-driven.

Yes, QuickMasonry 2.0 will likely meet your needs for clay masonry or CMU design tasks that you will face everyday--because hundreds of your peers have used the tool and told us what was missing. IES has now released the results of this yearlong partnership with customers and it is time for you to reap the rewards.

Free Upgrade from Version 1.0!

If you have been using QuickMasonry 1.0, then you should promptly uninstall that product, go to the Updates page on the web site and install version 2.0. It will work "out of the box" for you with your same license key. No cost, no hassles, just a free upgrade!

Get More Information or a Free-Trial

If you have not been using QuickMasonry 2.0, now is the time to take a second look. As with all the IES Quick* products, this one offers tremendous features including the fantastic Transparent Reporting™ that gets you out of the black-box and into fully verifiable 21^st Century structural engineering. Nothing is left to chance as you, your checkers, and your local building officials will be able to see exactly what checks were made by the software.

Check the web site for screen shots, sample reports, a comprehensive feature list, and then download the free-trial. Solve your next problem in minutes, with QuickMasonry 2.0.

[Back to Top]

Custom Wood Shapes: SB4 to VA5.5

A Tutorial for wood shape design in VisualAnalysis!

Exporting a shape from ShapeBuilder to the Shape Database for use in VisualAnalysis 5.5 was supposed to be trivial. Thankfully, for steel shapes it is very easy. For wood shapes it is almost as easy but there is an additional step that is difficult to find in the documentation. This tutorial provides the missing link!

Unfortunately, ShapeBuilder 4.0 cannot be used to export cold-formed steel shapes that can be designed using VisualDesign, for that you need the CFS tool from www.rsgsoftware.com and the IES Shape Database Editor. You can create custom cold-formed shapes in ShapeBuilder to get properties, even effective properties, as well as export them for analysis in VisualAnalysis, just not design checks.

For wood shapes, it is not enough to export from ShapeBuilder 4.0, you also need to mess around in the Shape Database Editor to get shapes that can be designed in VisualDesign. In this tutorial, we would like to explain how it is done, as we have had a number of technical support questions on the subject.

The Process

There are four steps involved in getting a custom wood shape from ShapeBuilder into the database so that it can be used for design. If you only need analysis capabilities, then you can skip step 2 in the process, and step 4 will not apply.

1. Create a custom wood shape in ShapeBuilder and export it.
2. Set up the appropriate "property sets" using the Shape Database Editor.
3. Create a model in VisualAnalysis using your custom shape.
4. Set up Design Groups and get unity checks in VisualDesign.

Here then are these steps in a bit more detail, with some background explanations. You will find additional details about the process and function of the database in the help files that are included with the products mentioned, especially in the Shape Database Editor.

For the purposes of this tutorial, we will assume that our shape is a doubled SS2x12.

Step 1: Create and Export the Shape

You can export a wood shape, which is a single "piece" from ShapeBuilder to the database using the File | Export to Database command. It helps to do an Advanced Analysis first, so that you get an accurate value for the torsion constant, J. In the Export Wizard, be sure to check the box for Design checks, and then select "Generic Rectangle" in the next page:

For steel shapes, this would be enough (you would select the best steel-design property set here), you would be done and you could use the shape in VisualDesign. Unfortunately, wood shapes require that TWO property sets be defined, and the export wizard only allows you to set up one of them. So while we have defined the actual b and d dimensions (Generic Rectangle), the design software also needs the nominal b and d values (Dimension Sawn Wood property set). So we must use the Shape Database Editor to complete this process, which we will do in step 2.

Before that however, we need to decide WHERE in the database to place our shape. Again, wood design is a bit fickle, and we MUST use the existing wood shape categories in the database to ensure our shape will be usable. For a doubled SS2x12 we will use the same category for the existing SS2x12 shapes: "NDS Wood\Dim. Lumber (Std. Dressed)". So on the next page of the export wizard we select this category and provide a reasonable name for the custom shape: "2x_SS2x12":

Step 2: Run the Shape Database Editor.

Now the shape is in the database, but it is still missing a bit of information that the design software needs. You can run the Shape Database Editor (Start | All Programs | IES | Shape Database Editor) to supply the missing information quite easily.

After running the tool, you may be prompted to select the database to use, select the 'new' database system. Locate your custom shape in the tree and notice the "Property Sets" shown to the right. Select an existing shape (like the original SS2x12) and notice that it displays the additional Dimension Sawn Wood properties:

To add the missing information, you simply right-click on your custom shape and select the Add Support for Property Set command. Next you choose the Dimension Sawn Wood property set from the list, click OK and you will be allowed to provide the properties needed:

Now you can exit the Shape Database Editor (it should prompt to save the NDS Wood.dbs file).

Step 3: Build your VisualAnalysis Model

Now that you have the shape defined in the database, you can select it for a member in your model. There is no "trick" to this step, you select the shape just as you would any other from the database. For wood design, though, it is important that your wood material correctly "match" the wood shape, according to the rows in the following table:

Please Note: If you had previously used a custom shape in VisualAnalysis and missed step 2 or got the properties wrong and you had saved that shape in a .VAP project, the new properties are not automatically pulled from the database. VisualAnalysis caches shape and material properties in the .VAP file so that your project file is portable to others who do not have your customized database, so you will need to re-select the shape from the database to obtain the updated properties.

Step 3: Set up Design Groups

Once you have analyzed your model and have reasonable analysis results, you can start designing. The first step is to set up a Design Group for wood design, in a Design View. You will create a "Wood NDS 2001 ASD" group, and then make sure to check the "Design As" shape and material in the Project Manager Modify tab showing the Design Group properties--they must match the categories used in the model.

You should then be able to see unity check values in the Design View for your member, be able to Design the Group, and also to double-click the member to see the design checks in a report.

Conclusions

This tutorial should provide you with the details you need to add custom wood shapes to your database. If you modify shape or material database files, or create new ones, be sure that you make backup copies so that you do not lose your customizations. The database files are located (by default) in "C:\Program Files\IES\IESCommonFiles\".

In the future, we hope to eliminate step 2 in this process, making it easier to create custom shapes in the database. We also hope to provide better support for doubled (and tripled, etc.) shapes for modeling in VisualAnalysis!

[Back to Top]

Don't Black Box It! (Continued from Column 2)

Conclusions

At IES these questions are always in our minds whenever we make a modification to any of our products. And whenever there is any doubt we err on the side of conservative. This is why the engineers at IES always appear well rested: we sleep soundly at night knowing that we are doing the right thing.

We all like to consider ourselves ethical engineers, and I would say that those who use our software are some of the most ethical and conscientious engineers in our profession. However, in today's competitive economy it is all too easy to be swept up by marketing hype, time pressures, and financial restrictions. As engineers we are familiar with the expression "use the right tool for the right job." However, it is our interpretation of "the right tool" that must be examined. At IES we believe that our software is "right" because it is thorough, transparent and programmed by real engineers.