Structural analysis manual

What PerCode AEC computes in structural mode, how, and why — for the engineer who signs the work. Each mode that computes has its own analysis manual: this one is structural's; the electrical manual comes next, then plumbing and HVAC. Each chapter states the rule the program follows, the standard and edition it applies, and its limits.

This manual is being written. Its chapters, as they are planned:

1. The analytical model — one three-dimensional frame from the physical model; touching members are connected; members, sheathing panels, links and releases.
2. Supports and bearings — foundations; truss and joist bearings; the roof-level cut of raked walls; the diaphragm's connection to the walls.
3. Loads — tributary areas, dead loads from the assemblies, live loads, snow, wind (main wind-force resisting system and components and cladding), seismic forces at the levels, the mass source, load patterns and combinations.
4. The solver — the linear frame analysis, how the model is divided, how a mechanism is found and reported.
5. The load path and CHECK MODEL — what is checked before an analysis, and the dead-load solve.
6. Substructure analysis — one roof or floor analysed on what it stands on; what it includes, and where it differs from the whole model's analysis.
7. Design, by material — wood, cold-formed steel, steel, concrete and masonry: members, walls, shear walls and hold-downs, headers and plates, diaphragms, footings and slabs, connectors.
8. Conventions — axes, signs and units.
9. Verification — the verification problems, each with its external benchmark and the program's result.
10. Limits — what the program does not model.