Waffle Slab in RAM Concept

RE: Waffle Slab in RAM Concept

TLiebhold — Fri, 12 Dec 2014 19:39:51 GMT

Thanks. Removing the shear bars (may not have been in the model I sent you) and it seemed to help by leaps and bounds, I'll just have to justify the program shear bars with the existing.

Any other thoughts on the setup I've used in the model from a general best-practices standpoint?

When I let the program add reinforcing to the existing, it seems to lump it all into a single rib for bottom bars, as opposed to distributing it.

RE: Waffle Slab in RAM Concept

Seth Guthrie — Fri, 12 Dec 2014 19:29:14 GMT

A couple of Ram Concept developers looked into your problem.

The biggest slow down is in the detailing of user bars, as we both noticed. They have logged a defect to improve the performance for this with the next release, if possible.

Regarding the 64 bit version, below is a nice explanation of what changed from 32 bit. The same applies to most other products that have 64 bit versions, like RAM Structural System:

Despite what the processor manufacturers want you to believe, not every 64 bit program will be significantly faster than its 32 bit version.

If the program moves around significantly large chunks of data, like video playback, then the wider data paths will speed that up. However, a 64 bit computation-bound program will only be 10-20% faster. That's what we have observed with Concept.

The biggest improvement to Concept x64 is a much larger address space for data. So instead of having to fit the program executable and your model data into 3Gb, 64 bit Concept has plenty of room for huge models. The "Available memory" for Concept on your machine should be in the 10's of Gb's range, limited only by the amount of physical RAM you have in your machine.

This portion of the analysis is single threaded (some parts are multi-threaded).

RE: Waffle Slab in RAM Concept

Seth Guthrie — Thu, 11 Dec 2014 20:44:23 GMT

That would work too, but only if the Concept file with user shear bars and the parent RAM SS file were both saved before renaming to filename.zip.

RE: Waffle Slab in RAM Concept

TLiebhold — Thu, 11 Dec 2014 20:06:43 GMT

Ahh- there's my challenge. I unlinked it by extracting RAMSS as a .zip, and not by pulling it from the working directory.

RE: Waffle Slab in RAM Concept

Seth Guthrie — Thu, 11 Dec 2014 20:03:19 GMT

User defined shear bars are being saved properly for me using Concept 5.2 and RAM SS 14.06.02.00 (both 64 bit). I tested launching the Concept level a couple of times from Manager, and I even extracted the file from the working directory like this post indicates and all worked fine.

RE: Waffle Slab in RAM Concept

TLiebhold — Thu, 11 Dec 2014 19:32:21 GMT

Also, I just discovered, that the Concept model extracted from a RAM SS model doesn't even have the user defined shear bars. Clearly still a work in progress.

RE: Waffle Slab in RAM Concept

TLiebhold — Thu, 11 Dec 2014 18:12:14 GMT

Thanks - that doesn't really help, as I'm evaluating an existing structure. Let me know if you find anything out.

RE: Waffle Slab in RAM Concept

Seth Guthrie — Thu, 11 Dec 2014 18:10:15 GMT

After an hour it's still "Detailing User Reinforcement". I'll direct the issue to the program developers in case there is anything to be done to speed things up. Meanwhile, you might try running it with program optimized reinforcement only.

RE: Waffle Slab in RAM Concept

Seth Guthrie — Thu, 11 Dec 2014 17:02:44 GMT

I see the file now and I'm checking how long it takes on my machine using v5.2.

RE: Waffle Slab in RAM Concept

TLiebhold — Thu, 11 Dec 2014 16:58:07 GMT

Thanks Seth. As I mentioned in the original post, I have already uplaoded the file. I have also done all of those steps as outlined in other posts.

Why call it a 64bit version, if it doesn't actually behave as one? I have a monster machine on my desktop that should gobble this sort of thing up.

RE: Waffle Slab in RAM Concept

Seth Guthrie — Thu, 11 Dec 2014 16:54:06 GMT

I think the Concept analysis is limited to a single core which might account for the limited CPU resources it claims. Using the 64 bit version and he Pardiso solver are good ideas. The other things I can think of to possibly speed things up are to:

Remove any drawing files (file – Delete drawing)
Mesh as large as possible while still getting the accuracy you need
Remove non critical design strips, sections, or loadings
Stop other applications
Close all open Windows/tabs in Concept prior to a calc all.

Assuming the rib beams are the thickest items, it doesn't matter if they are given a higher priority and meshed using the slab priority method or just meshed as beams. The result should be the same. You can always check the element perspective for confirmation of the final meshed structure.

User shear bars are fairly new. Using them in narrow ribs, especially where design strips encompass multiple ribs could potentially be causing your problems, but we would need to see the model to judge. Use the Secure File upload link below left to send, and let me know what it's called when done.