CSI Etabs/SAFE FEM REbar Contour Export 1

[DavidAtkins]

Hopefully you can shed some light into this.
I have a significant project that would require us to intensely use SAFE/Etabs to analyse and design slabs/walls for the structures and I are keen to understand if there are functionalities that allow us to complete the design of a slab within CSI Etabs/SAFE.
I am interested in extracting the rebar area information in units of mm²/m. My aim is to utilise this data for further processing from excel and the to our auto drawing generator tool.

Is that possible? I can seem to find the option in SAFE/ETabs to export the FEM based Rebar Area Contours.

Thanks
David

 

[DavidAtkins]

*cannot

 

[CuriousBearcat]

Are you able to upload a sample file?

-Just a curious engineer

 

[DavidAtkins]

Have a go. I cannot find a way to export the FEM results. I can export only the strip method results

 

[CuriousBearcat]

Thanks for providing this file DavidAtkins. I am trying to use the API feature through C# language to see if I can extract the FEM results. However, my SAFE free version does not support it currently. Would be curious and happy to take a look at it on your PC, if that works, through zoom or teams during the weekend - seems like it might work but cannot guarantee - will have to dig a bit deeper and get hands dirty (also because it's a significant project for you).

-Just a curious engineer

 

[DavidAtkins]

Thats really cool! DO you have the script to share? so that I can check ?

 

[CuriousBearcat]

I do not - I need to look at the documentation for SAFE and see what API functions they provide first and what arguments these functions need. I do not have this documentation.

-Just a curious engineer

 

[sticksandtriangles]

After a quick review of the API for SAFE, I do not see anything immediately available that would give access to contour plot type results like rebar densities.

S&T

 

[sticksandtriangles]

DavidAtkins, unfortunately SAFE/ETABs lacks a bit on post analysis results and rebar results, see this eng-tips post here:

https://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=504797

Do you have access to RAM concept? RAM concept is easier to extract rebar results and data. You can write a few custom tools to send this data to documentation like Revit for drawing automation.

S&T

 

[bookowski]

You could draw 1 ft design strips in both directions, export those, and treat that as your contour (i.e. that's your steel per foot). Or even more granular, say 6". I've spent a lot of time battling safe. I'd be wary of designing based on the contours or anything other than their design strip output. The design that comes out of the strips includes axial forces, wood armer moments, etc. I don't think the fem contours include this. I am not 100% sure now but I know that I went through this several years ago and found this discrepancy. In general it seems nuts that we should need to write our own tools for doing design with either of these programs unless it's very atypical or that's just your thing. The info is already baked into their programs and they've got a team of programmers that presumably could do it far better than us.