Steel, timber and cold formed steel design standards – fully integrated with analysis software

SkyCiv has built in member design modules for both SkyCiv Structural 3D and SkyCiv Beam. These modules are fully integrated – which means you model them in the program and all the results, properties and dimensions are loaded directly into the program, so that you don’t have to spend the time re-entering all of this information.

SkyCiv offers the following integrated member design modules and more:

1. US:
   • AISC 360-10 and AISC 360-16 (ASD and LRFD)
   • NDS® standards 2018; (ASD and LRFD)
   • AISI S100-12 (ASD and LRFD) AISI S100-16 (ASD, LRFD and LSD)
2.  Europe:
   • Eurocode 3
     • EN 1993-1-1:2005
     • EN 1993-1-3:2006
3. Australia/NZ Standards:
   • AS 4100 (1998 and 2020)
   • AS 4600 (2005 and 2018)
   • AS 1720 (2010)
   • NZS 3404-1997
   • NZS 4600 (2005 and 2018)
4. Canadian Standards:
   • CSA S16 (S16-14 and S16-24)
5. British Standards:
   • BS 5950-1:2000
6. Indian Standards:
   • IS 800-2007 LSM
   • IS 800-1984 WSM

To check a single member without building a model, use SkyCiv Quick Design, it is a comprehensive library of more than 100 standalone structural calculators. They cover steel, cold-formed steel, timber, concrete and aluminium members, plus foundations, connections and other common checks. You enter the geometry, section, material and loads for a single element, and it runs the check to a chosen design code. Quick Design is better for fast checks of one element without building a full model.

Using the Module

Integrated with SkyCiv Structural 3D

The member design modules are loaded into the software by clicking the “Design” button in the Model / Solve / Design bar at the top of the screen:

This will prompt you to select a design module.

Selecting a design module will open up a dropdown to select the Design Code which opens a tab on the left side with all of the information and input required to run a design check. For the most part, everything has been imported directly from the sections and results, so you can run the design software by clicking the blue “Check” button.

Details

The first tab Details, simply allows the user to add in more information about the project such as Project Name, ID, Designer and notes. These will appear at the top of the reports generated by the design module.

Factors

Factors are specific to each design module. Please visit the specific module documentation page for more information.

Members

The Members tab contains all the input related to the each of the members to be designed in the module. These may contain specific parameters for each design software (hover over the tooltips  for more info). These can be changed at anytime by changing the values in the cells.

The Design Member table contains all the members, their materials, section IDs, length and their limit factors that have been automatically populated from the model.

Flexural Buckling

For single members the braced length and effective length factors can be set for their respective axes:

• Ly (braced length along y axis),
• Lz (braced length along z-axis),
• Ky (effective length factor along y-axis),
• Kz (effective length factor along z-axis)

For combined members the critical braced length (the one which will govern the design) should be entered manually.

For combined members the critical effective length factor (the one which will govern the design) should be entered manually.

Flexural-Torisional Buckling

For combined members the critical unbraced length of the beam should be entered manually:

• Llt (critical unbraced length of beam)

Slenderness

If this check is not required increasing the default values for members in tension and compression to above the value required to pass.

Deflection

Deflection is checked against the local displacement of each member relative to it’s globally displaced position along the axis of interest. This check is not required in all circumstances, if your design is failing due to this check you can decrease the limit to 1 to ensure that the check does not fail.

Sections and Materials

The materials and Sections (in the lower tables) are automatically populated from the model. You can hover over the info (i) icon for more information.

Forces

Internal member forces are automatically imported from the structural analysis, this includes load combinations. The software will display each of the forces as per the selected load combination. The software will design check based on the worst case for each member and load combination.

Results

There are a number of ways to review the results of your design check:

• Tabulated Results – these will highlight the members as Pass or Fail in green or red, respectively. You can export these results as a CSV
• Graphical Results – on the right side, the structure will display the green and red colouring of each member as well as the highest capacity ratio of all the results. For instance, if the max capacity ratio is 1.321 for Slenderness, it will display 1.321 Sl – it will display as red as the ratio is > 1. The result colours, are represented as follows:
  • Green: The maximum member utility ratio is < 1, and therefore passing the requirements of this standard
  • Orange: The maximum member utility ratio is between > 0.95 but < 1. It is still passing, but close to full utilization
  • Red: The maximum member utility ratio is > 1, and therefore failing the requirements of this standard
  • Gray: A grey member will indicate that a design check was not performed on this member. This could be for a number of reasons, including; this section shape is not supported by this design code, the member is a custom section, the material inputs were not specified correctly.
• You can also select specific design ratios, by changing the dropdown list of “Show Design Ratios for:” – this will show All Results (maximum capacity ratio) by default.
• Reporting – You can export a PDF summary report of the design checks at anytime.

Filtering

Sometimes on larger structures you might want to filter out certain members to clearly identify members of significance. For instance, isolating any failing members. To filter specific members based on pass/fail criteria or sections, click the filter icon above the results table:

Selecting Failed Members will filter and display only those members that are failing:

Full Design Reporting

Full design reporting, including step by step calculation reports for each member, are available for certain steel member design codes. These reports show full references, assumptions, calculation decisions and utility ratios, so engineers can take a closer look at what the software is doing. Available for all above design codes.

Integrated with SkyCiv Beam

Member design is also built into SkyCiv Beam. The section, material, length and analysis results go straight to the design module, so you can check a single beam against steel, cold-formed steel, wood, concrete or aluminium design codes without re-entering anything.

Build and solve the beam. Add the supports, section, loads and at least one load combination (you can import them from a design code such as AS/NZS 1170.0), then click Solve.

Choose the design code and check the inputs. Open the Design tab in the right-hand panel, pick a code (for example AS 4100-2020), and review the Design Factors and Member Design lengths and factors. Every cell can be edited.

Run the design check. Click Run Design Check. The Quick Ratio Summary shows the worst ratio of each check (green passes, red fails). Click a check to see its capacity and ratio, and open the Member 1 Report or the Design Summary Report for the full calculations.

For a full step-by-step example, including each input, the result symbols, the reports and the optimizer, see the full guide: Member Design in SkyCiv Beam