I'm referring to the STAAD.Foundation help>General Foundations>Grouping Foundation Designs. Step 3 says to select 'Create Schematic Diagram' tool. Was this tool renamed or did the procedure change? I did manage to do the grouping but I came up with design error after grouping which makes me wonder what did I do wrong.
The steps that I followed regardless to the help were:
1. I created an isolated footing job for all footings together
2. I started the design which concluded with zero warnings and zero errors with all isolated footings design status 'Passed'
3. I activated the Geometry tab, and in the bottom output pane with the Isofoot Design Summary tab active I selected 2 footings that were identically designed (Also note that I only have one job created)
4. On the tools ribbon>Grouping I selected 'Create Group'
5. I gave a name to the group and clicked save for the designer to start again (which I don't find a reason for, this is just grouping)
--->Please note that at this point as a user I expect the software to simply unify the 'GrpID' for the selected footings with the name I gave in step 5, so there should be no errors, specially that the software -logically- does not give the user the option to change any parameters ever since clicking the 'Create Group' button.
Now the following was observed after step 5:
The software finishes the run and refreshes to a window of a new job was created (not a group) that failed in design
Upon switching back to the original job, the 'GrpID' for the selected footings are now given new identical numbers starting from where the last in sequence of footings was. and the spacing of bars is now zero with the design status 'Passed'
Am I doing grouping the correct way?
Additionally, I wish grouping can be done automatically upon instructing the software to do so, similar to what RCDC does with column grouping. As a software user I expect to rely on the software on tasks like finding similar footing and group them, besides the option for the user to group manually. It would also be good to have the option to instruct to group footings with only similar dimensions (hence the max reinforcing will be applied to all) or group those with similar dimensions and reinforcement.
Lastly, upon closing the file to attach it to this post and reopening it just for checking, I am unable to view the calculation sheet no matter how many times I close and open the file and re-run the design (the underlined only showed up after 3rd trial I guess):
The version used is 8.4.0.21. File attached prior to group creation: MASJID AL EJELI R4_foundation.sfa
STAAD file used to export STAAD.Foundation: MASJID AL EJELI R4.std
Thanks for bearing with me.
We will respond to this ASAP.