Articles

The Best Steel Connection Design Software

IDEA Statica steel connection design

Structural engineers should use the correct tools available to safely design steel connections.

Steel connection design is a laborious exercise. Doing things by hand could quickly become very tedious or even impractical considering multitude of checks that need to be carried out to comply with code requirements. With the general availability of Microsoft Excel, most of these checks can be automated. AISC 360, BS 5950 and Eurocode 3 … Read more about The Best Steel Connection Design Software

Scaling of Base Shear in ETABS

Excel story base shear plot

Seismic base shear computed from modal response spectrum analysis should be scaled to a minimum percentage of the static base shear.

This post presents the procedure in scaling of base shear in ETABS. It is assumed that you are already aware of the principles of response spectrum analysis and are using CSI ETABS as your analysis tool. UBC-97 and ASCE 7-05 or later require that the base shear calculated using modal response spectrum dynamic analysis should … Read more about Scaling of Base Shear in ETABS

The Mathematics of Orthographic Projections and Linear Perspective

Is there Math in drawings?

Technical Drawing is one of the basic subjects in any engineering course. One could never overemphasize its importance. Ironically, it is often taken for granted – considered as a minor subject which is geared more to developing an engineer’s manual skill rather than his mental prowess. Thus, I will not be surprised if people, including … Read more about The Mathematics of Orthographic Projections and Linear Perspective