I currently trying to cross check hand calculations for the design of the lift wall and raft foundation of a 14 storey building(columns & flat slabs) with STAAD Pro v8i by trying to input the whole building on the program. I have used beams to model the columns, surfaces for the lift walls and plates for the slabs. The raft and columns & walls starting from this level have been successfully input on the program. But when it came to the 1st slab level, the program was unable to generate the parametric model, presumably because there was already a large no. of plates and beams(around1300). My question is, what is the REAL limit in terms of no. of nodes and elements that STAAD Pro v8i can handle? (As the limits stated in the technical reference is even much larger) Is there any simpler way to input such a structure?
Well, not really a direct answer to your question, but the easy way is to use RAM structural system combined with RAM concept.
I think you could probably do it with STAAD, but managing everything (and running it) will take forever.