AISC 341-05 Seismic Provision:
The requirements of AISC 341-05 Seismic Provisions have been incorporated for member and joint design in RAM Frame in the Steel – Seismic Provisions mode.
Concrete Shear Walls:
The following enhancements have been made to the Concrete Shear Wall Design module:
- Drastic improvements have been made to the speed of the design process when executing Design-All or View-Update.
- Engineers can now opt to save the design results for only the most critical load combinations. This has been added in the General Criteria. Choosing to save design results for fewer load combinations reduces file size and program run time.
- The engineer now has control over how vertical reinforcement is placed at wall corners through use of the Assign - Wall Panel Priority command, allowing for more efficient and economical designs.
- A new calculation sheet “Boundary Elements” has been added to the View/Update dialog when ACI 318-05 is used. This page reports information related to the special boundary element calculations of Chapter 21 for any load combinations containing an earthquake load case.
Live Load Reduction:
The Live Load Reduction requirements for AS/NZS 1170.1 (Australia and New Zealand), GB 50009-2001 (China) and Hong Kong Building Regulation have been incorporated.
Australia Steel Tables:
Tables of Australia steel shapes and steel deck profiles have been created and included.
File commands:
A File – Close Model command has been added. This is useful when working with external programs (such as RAM Concept or RAM Connection) that require the model to be closed in order to access the information in the database.
Consistent Window Sizing:
Rather than defaulting to the full screen mode, the RAM Modeler and the design module windows can now maintain a consistent window size and location on the screen specified by the user.
RSS Feed:
The RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed items on the lower portion of the RAM Manager screen can now be directed to specific regions. Feed items directed to regions other than the region that the user is in can be filtered out using the Tools – RSS Feed Options command.
Modeler:
Deck polygons and Snow load polygons that have been laid down can now be modified using the Change Polygon commands. Polygon vertices can be dragged to new locations, adjacent vertices can be merged, and new vertices added by splitting a side into two sides.
RAM Frame:
In addition to the requirements of the AISC 341-05 Seismic Provisions, the following enhancements have been incorporated:
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An option to include the requirements of Supplement #2 of ASCE 7-05 has been added when generating seismic story forces per ASCE 7-05.
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Notional Loads per BS 8110 can be generated.
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The ASCE 7 Stability Coefficients report has been added. This report calculates and lists the Stability Coefficient for each ASCE 7 and IBC Seismic load case.
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Crack factors for each of Flexural, Axial and Torsional stiffness of concrete beams, columns and braces can be assigned in the Modeler, and applied to frame members in the analysis performed in RAM Frame. Previously only a flexural crack factor could be assigned. Note that for models created in previous versions the cracked factors for axial and torsional stiffness of columns, beams and braces will be set to 1.0 when they are opened in V12.1, to be consistent with the values used previously, but they can be modified in the Modeler as desired.
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K-factors can now be assigned to braces even when the design code is AISC 360-05 (when K is normally considered to be 1.0). This allows, for example, the assigning of K = 0.5 to cross braces to account for the bracing effects of the cross braces.
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Clicking the right mouse button now brings up the previous dialog box, making it consistent with the Modeler and the other design modules.
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The Wall Group Force Summary report command has been enhanced to allow selection of specific walls and wall groups to be included in the report. Previously the report always included the results for all wall groups.
RAM Concrete:
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For large models the option of using the out-of-core solver is now available.
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The Singapore concrete design code, CP65, has been added to RAM Concrete.
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In addition to the option to consider gravity columns pinned at the base at foundations, an option to consider the columns pinned at the base at transfer girders has also been implemented. An option to consider gravity columns pinned at the top has also been implemented.
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Previously there was an option to specify a reduced torsional stiffness on beams. There is now a capability to assign a torsional crack factor in the Modeler, so that command has been enhanced to allow the user to either specify the use of that factor or the use of the factor explicitly specified in the command.
New Features and Enhancements in V12.0:
Concrete Shear Wall Design:
The RAM Concrete Shear Wall Design module has been added to RAM Concrete. The module provides the complete design of vertical and horizontal reinforcing in concrete walls according to the requirements of ACI 318-05 and BS 8110-97. The task of designing walls is highly automated, including the selection of reinforcing steel, calculation of design forces, generation of design combinations and determination of critical design sections. Designs can be optimized or interactively modified and analyzed. Reinforcement may be automatically selected by the program or specified directly by the engineer. RAM’s trademark View/Update feature has been tailored to the wall design process, allowing for easy yet thorough review and revision of the design results.
Among the many advantages of the Shear Wall Design module is its integration with the RAM Structural System. Changes to the model geometry and design loads are reflected immediately in the RAM Concrete environment, eliminating the need to manually reapply or transfer wall forces into a non-integrated wall design environment. In addition, the Shear Wall Design module can handle complex wall and wall opening geometries that most current solutions simply do not allow.
Flexible Diaphragms:
In addition to the option to specify diaphragms as rigid, an option to specify a diaphragm as “pseudo-flexible” has been incorporated in RAM Frame, allowing the user to specify the percent of the total story force at that level to be applied to each frame. This provides the user a simple and effective means of controlling the distribution of story forces when the diaphragm cannot be considered rigid.
Modeler:
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Surface load polygons that have been laid down can now be modified using the Change Polygon command. Polygon vertices can be dragged to new locations, adjacent vertices can be merged, and new vertices added by splitting a side into two sides.
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Beam Generation: A new option has been incorporated for generating beams at an equal spacing along the primary beams not to exceed the maximum allowable spacing specified by the user.
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Deck Orientation: For specifying the orientation of the deck there is now the ability to pick a beam to which the deck is parallel or perpendicular.
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The Zoom and Scroll commands can be invoked while laying down deck and load polygons without disrupting the polygons.
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The Set Snap Points command now has Select All / Deselect All buttons.
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The Set Show Options command now has options to show unclipped load and deck polygons, whereby the polygons will be displayed without being clipped by the slab edges.
RAM Steel Column:
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A View – Nonpertinent Members command and toolbar button has been incorporated which allows the user to specify how nonpertinent members (i.e., those that are not pertinent to the design module, such as beams in the Column module) are displayed: Draw Normal, Draw as Lines, or Hide.
RAM Frame:
In addition to the Pseudo-flexible Diaphragm capability, RAM Frame has been enhanced with several new features, including:
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A new, more versatile and accurate wall element has been implemented with an option to include out-of-plane stiffness.
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A scheme for recovering and applying signs to the Response Spectra analysis results has been implemented.
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Frame Story Shears can be displayed on-screen.
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The Member Forces command has been enhanced to allow selection of member types (beams, columns, braces or walls) for which the member forces are to be displayed.
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A toolbar button to show and hide Frame Numbers has been added.
RAM Concrete:
In addition to the new Shear Wall Design module, the following enhancement has been incorporated:
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A View – Nonpertinent Members command and toolbar button has been incorporated which allows the user to specify how nonpertinent members (i.e., those that are not pertinent to the design module, such as beams in the Column module) are displayed: Draw Normal, Draw as Lines, or Hide.
Deck Table: