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Continuous Footing - Option to not consider perpendicular footings

Provide an option so that perpendicular footing loads are not applied to the continuous footing. I'm not sure I understand why the program does this in the first place. It seems like you are accounting for the load twice under the current rules. 

  • For any user with both programs (or the Structural WorkSuite), my current recommendation would be:

    • Walls - 2D, no intersections, no pilasters, and not too long - Use Ram Foundation
    • Walls - 2D, no intersections, no pilasters but very long - segment the walls and use Ram Foundation
    • Anything else involving walls - Use Ram Concept
  • The example of the shaft is a good example where you would want to use a mat and that makes sense. However, I still see weird results with walls spaced far apart (with intersections) where I truly want 2 direction strip footings. Are you saying you model each strip as a mat? 

    I guess what I would be looking for is something that considers only the load on the wall which the footing supports. So at corners one footing would need to "run through". There would be no option to increase footing length, only width. This is typically how these are sized in "hand calcs". You might have a heavy point load at the corner where you would want to increase the length, but again, you can't. So in that case you would add a "column / pier" and add an isolated footing. Typically, that is what we do anyway for heavy point loads due to wall openings.

    Having said that maybe there is a situation that I'm not imagining where you would run into issues (speaking from the programmer's perspective). It just seems like the current method is disconnected from how things are traditionally approached (which is what makes RAMSS so attractive in the first place). 

  • It was done that way for simplicity sake and to be conservative. For others who want to know more see: https://communities.bentley.com/products/ram-staad/w/structural_analysis_and_design__wiki/8147/ram-ss---foundation-faq#long 

    My preference for 2 directional strip footings is to model them as a mat and analyze them in Ram Concept where, the soil bearing check and footing bending checks can all be done for a single model.