Beam column joint

[IvanWilliam]

Dear seismosoft,
For introduction I made 6 story RC frame structure for my last subject in my undergraduate final project. I designed the structure using FBD and DDBD procedure, and i want to analyze using dynamic time history. The things i want to ask :
1.Should beam column joint be idealised to be rigid?and if I have to,how to idealization rigid beam column joint in seismostruct?
I already used rigid_arm in elfrm element class, just like example verification 5.4(from DDBD CD(2007)) and i applied it to my 3D frame structure. The fact is, when iteration permanent loading, it's said (Max_Tol) and the iteration could not continue.

[seismosoft]

Dear Ivan William,

1) it is really up to you to assess if the beam-column joints that you have designed will behave as rigid or not. We would imagine that a newly designed RC structure using capacity-design principles would indeed feature rigid beam-column joints, but, we repeat, this should be a call for you to make, based on engineering judgement.

2) if you do decide to model the joints as rigid, you may perhaps want to try using the rigid offsets modelling feature now present in SeismoStruct v6.

Seismosoft Support

[IvanWilliam]

Dear seismosoft,

Thank you for your supports,i will try seismostruct v6.

best regrads,
Ivan William