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Steel design: Results

Running a Design task produces the following results and output

  • A report in the Report pane as the task executes.
  • Member design history – accessed from Output explorer > Member results. This outline the design history for each member, recorded over multiple runs of Design Tasks.
  • Member user modules – accessed from Output explorer > User modules. These contain the utilizations of each Member in the Design Task post-design.

Apart from the above, GSA also presents force and displacements results for Members. These are accessed from Output explorer > Member results.

Results are available for any valid analysis case or combination. There is no stage at which the user requests a design to be processed. Instead, when the data is correctly specified to enable the design calculations to be carried out the design results options become available. The design results are calculated only at the time they are needed for display.

The Design > Check design data menu command may be used at any stage to establish whether the data has been correctly specified for steel design. The details of any problems appear in a message box that is displayed after this command is given.

A convenient way of inspecting results for individual members in rapid succession is to use the Result pane.

Select the type of results to be shown from the dropdown menu at the top of the window. Once the Object viewer window is set to display member results (for example: brief results), the member to be inspected is selected by clicking on the relevant member in any graphic view that is showing any members. The view could usefully be displaying a contour of member utilisation, so that members of particular interest could be picked.

Steel utilisation factors can be output in the same way as stress results, i.e. they may be shown in graphic views as contours or diagrams, in output views as tables of steel utilisation, or in the Result pane.

Steel design summaries, brief calculations, verbose calculations and effective lengths are also available in output views and the Result pane.