Different Values for Different Column Sections

[t_turgay]

Hello everybody,

I am new to the SeicmoCtruct program. I urgently need your help with a seemingly trivial issue. I need to define different section dimension values for each column. The problems is, when I double click on section name "scol" under "Sections" tab, "Edit Section Properties" box opens. There I can enter "section height" and "section width" values under "Materials and Dimensions" tab. When I click "OK", SeismoStruct applies those dimension values for ALL COLUMNS. What I want to accomplish is to enter different dimension values for different columns. Any help is appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[fbianchi]

Hi,

I'll try to explain you the procedure.
First of all, you have to define a section for each type of column you need.
For example:
scol1 rcrs steel unc conf 0.3 0.4 ......
scol2 rcrs steel unc conf 0.2 0.2 .....
scol3 rcrs steel unc conf 0.5 0.3 .....
Then, in the "Element Classes" module you have to associate that particular section to a class (for example infrmDB):
col1 scol1 200
col2 scol2 200
col3 scol3 200
At this point, in the "Element Connectivity" module you have to associate a class to each element you want to define. For example:
el1 col1 node1 node2 non1
el2 col2 node3 node4 non1
el3 col3 node5 node6 non1
el4 col3 node7 node8 non1
el5 col1 node9 node10 non1
That's it!
For details, please refer to the Help System.

Federica