RAM DA SS Extracting Shear force in tabular format

Hi,

I am looking to extract some information from RAM using a VBA. Currently, I am specifically looking to extract the Max Shear (Max VEd) and the Shear force used to calculate the capacity (VEd). I have looked into RAM DataAcess and writing codes to extract information - able to extra beam/column size, UID, X,Y,Z coordinate etc.

I have attempted to extract the shear force using IAnalyticalResult>IMemberForces>GetMaximumComboReactions>IMemberForce.dShearMajor. This method does give me some data but when I check it against RAM, I am unsure of what information is actually pulled out from RAM? Is this the correct way of obtaining design results?

Also, what can be extracted from RAM (in terms of results) as I know most properties can be easily extracted.

Thanks in advance,

Russell

  • Russell,

    There is a limited amount of design information available in RAM DataAccess. Forces from RAM Frame and the RAM Gravity analysis are available. In addition, you can get at the flexural capacity in RAM Steel Beam and the load /capacity ratios in the steel modules, but you won’t find detailed information or intermediate design parameters.

    I assume that you are interested in shear for gravity steel beams. There is a defect logged for the GetMaximumComboReactions method and you probably don’t want to use the reaction as a shear value for beams that have cantilever extensions. Therefore, I’m going to suggest that you use the GetGravBeamForcesLeftAt method in the IForces2 interface. This method takes a location parameter that is a fraction between 0 and 1 representing the relative location from the left end of the beam. For beams without cantilevers, 0.00 is the left end and 1.00 is the right end. For beams with cantilever extensions, you might be interested in the shear just to the left and right of the support. Compute the relative location of the support and then pass in values that are slightly lower and higher. I recommend using a tolerance of 0.001. For example, for a beam with a left cantilever that is a quarter of the total span, pass in 0.249 and 0.251 to get the shear to the left and right of the support. Similarly, I’d use 0.001 and 0.999 rather than 0.000 and 1.000 for beams without cantilevers.

    If you are looking at lateral beams, GetLatBeamFrocesLeftAt is similar. However, you need to pass in the analysis case as well.