expand the scope when you choose structural steel members
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| member design |
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CHEOPS: a handy programme for single member design or quick design check |
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download for FREE: CHEOPS, and install it, password: adsl
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CHEOPS contains a number of modules:
Note: the media module has been eliminated from the download version of CHEOPS because of its shear volume. However, you can access it now directly on this site: MEDIA. All modules can be used with basic knowledge of Canadian steel design. Therefore, only one example will be discussed: Design of Beam-Columns
The Input tab brings up the intial specs as determined by the overall drawings and a structural analysis yield forces and moments on members. One can either input the values numerically or used the sliders, or the double scroll buttons. |
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Certain Factors need to be established as determined from the boundary and loading conditions.
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The Section tab gives us the choice to select a suitable shape.
While highlighting the shape of choice one should watch the status bar. If the selected shape is sufficient, a black OK is shown, if not you will see a red NOT OK. |
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The Section tab allows for smart member choices. Smart, because one can decide on a particular section based on several (three max.) criteria (selectable by pull-down window). This can reduce the choices of available / suitable shapes.
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An innovative feature is the interval scroll bar. This one simplifies the selection of desirable ranges. Like the previous scroll bars, one can use them with sliders or type in numerical values.
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Next is the display of the design point (intersection point of green design values of factored load and effective member length together with the member resistance of the entire allowable length range. The selected shape is highlighted by blue symbols.
Note: the cursor can highlight a second shape (shows up red on the graph and designation in the right lower corner) in order to compare a neighbouring shape with the selected. The current example shows both red and blue selection having the same capacity at the design length, however, the blue curve indicates a better performance of the W1000x833 in the shorter range, while the red W360x744 is performing better in the longer member range. This comparison feature makes CHEOPS so unique. Direct member behaviour is graphically available - effortless!
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The Check tab depicts the sketch with all paramters and design values and lists the complete Code check with formulae and numbers for CAN/CSA-S16.1-94 (see second scrollable window below).
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| Record page with final member checking results: | |
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For the complete design check please slide the scroll bar inside the above FlashPaper document downwards. |
Finally: CHEOPS is extremely compact as a programme, blazingly fast, and fool proof. Again: the download and use is free for life. |
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When choosing a suitable structural steel member based on a set of factored loads (in LSD), one often deals with one design point only. However, in order to choose the "best" structural section it requires more than knowing "this member has sufficient capacity". The characteristics of the member over an entire range of sizes ought to be compared with a number of similarly sized sections, and so on. This is one of the strong features of a handy programme, that has been developed by Lo, Gedig, Zhou and me - by practitioners for practitioners. The shapetables utilized in CHEOPS are courtesy of the CISC. The best: you can now download it for FREE: CHEOPS |
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