Material problems

[bbfl]

I have been trying to do concrete buildings in staad. I have columns and beams as members and slabs and walls as plates. In each attempt to model it in staad, whenever i run an analysis it says something about material constants not defined. I always define members and plate by going to create and specifying it there. To solve the problem i will put "all" beside the alpha, beta etc. This then stops the analysis the program running. Why is it then that i always seem to be getting problems with regards to defining a material.

 

[ThomasH]

Make sure that the constants are in the correct place in the input file, the std-file. If you define them by using the graphical interface they sometimes end up in the wrong place in that file, don't ask me why.

Good Luck

Thomas

 

[DaveVikingPE]

There's a check box called "after current" in the materials assignment dialog box. This will "assure" that your material constants are in the right place.

Mesh generation automatically splits beam elements. For some reason, the new beam elements don't inherit the material properties of the original beam... Uh-oh, better assign those material properties again.

What I've found that works best is to edit the input file in the STAAD editor. I'd say that I got "really good" at STAAD simply by getting intimate with the input (and output) file. The GUI is fine, but you've got to "see" everything and the best way (my experience) to see it is in the raw text format.