Frames and FEA

Built on it

• Advanced simulation — Nonlinear, contact, CalculiX file formats.
• Aerospace (aircraft) — Aircraft teaching sheets for PartCraft: wing lift, stall and induced drag, weight and balance, and the published 4-digit airfoil thickness and camber formulas.
• Bridge load rating — Load rating for short-span bridges.
• Concrete and seismic design — Concrete members, slabs, walls, seismic loads.
• Entertainment engineering (stages, rides, rigging) — Stage sheets for CadCraft and BimCraft: truss reactions, bridle sling tension and lighting beam and illuminance.
• Forensic engineering (failure investigation) — Failure-investigation sheets for BimCraft, PartCraft and CivilCraft: fall speed and energy, sliding distance and the failure load of a beam.
• Foundation design — Footings, mats, piles, retaining walls.
• Hazard playback — Earthquake, wind and flood on the model.
• Nuclear engineering — Radiation shielding teaching sheets for PartCraft and BimCraft: narrow-beam attenuation, inverse-square dose rate, decay and allowed time.
• Pipe stress — B31.3 checks on the routed pipes.
• Pressure vessels — Shells, heads, nozzles, supports, reports.
• Security and blast-resistant design — Frame, concrete and hazard items for BimCraft and DetailCraft with three screening sheets: scaled distance, load on a panel and the natural frequency of a beam.
• Solid FEM — Mesh a part, pick fixed faces and loads in the 3D view, and solve stress, displacement, reactions and natural frequencies with the CadCraft finite element library.
• Timber and light-gauge framing — Framed panels with cut lists.
• Timber connector designer — Designs dowel and plate connections for timber.
• Tunnel and underground engineering — Geotechnical tools for CivilCraft and DetailCraft with three sheets: segment ring geometry, muck volume and convergence-confinement.

Use it in your add-on

Name it in your manifest's needs. When someone adds your add-on, their account brings this engine too, and every edition loads it the first time your add-on needs it. Version ranges arrive with AL.13.

{
  "id": "com.example.my-addon",
  "apps": ["detailcraft", "bimcraft"],
  "needs": ["engine.frame"]
}

Methods and standards

Linear static analysis of a 3D frame by the direct stiffness method: Euler–Bernoulli beam-columns, static condensation for released ends, and Gauss quadrature for distributed loads. Steel checks follow the clauses of EN 1993-1-1 (doubly symmetric I and H sections, classes 1 to 3) and ANSI/AISC 360-16 (LRFD, rolled I-shapes). Concrete checks follow ACI 318-19. Seismic loads follow ASCE/SEI 7-22 chapter 12.

Limits

An analysis aid for an engineer to review, not a code approval. The analysis is first order; second-order effects need a separate run. Steel: class 4 sections are not checked, welded sections are not built, torsion under EN 1993 is not checked, and shear buckling beyond the code limit is not checked. Connections are checked only for the shear and axial force the app states. Wind loads are not built. Concrete checks cover rectangular sections only.