Just curious if the wood standards in RAM Elements are being actively maintained or not. The rolled steel, cold-formed steel, and concrete design specs are all listed as current (AISC 2016, AISI 2016, ACI 2014), but wood is still back on 2005, even though NDS 2018 is out. I'm trying to use RAM Elements to cross-check another program that is up-to-date in their references and would like to compare apples to apples as much as possible.
Thanks,
Jason
You might want to post this on our new Ideas channel too. communities.bentley.com/.../
Seth,
I know Mass Timber or CLT (cross-laminated timber) is a "Hot Topic" in the press. I'm guessing that 95% or higher of wood-framed projects do not use this innovative system for framing. So until Bentley has had a chance to add this tool, I would suggest that it would be reasonable to update the wood design capabilities and code checking from the 2005 NDS to something like 2015 or 2018. As long as it is clear that this chapter of the NDS is not included, I don't think you will find much resistance. Does this make sense and for Bentley does it make cents?
We don't have the updated code in the program yet, but the product managers are looking at this for the future. There are some large scale projects with monolithic wood members being designed these days that we would need to accommodate.
Seth, any update on this?
If I am not on the list for the NDS update, put me down. I have used Ram Elements numerous times for analysis and design of wood framing.