New

Account for offset when doing intersection

Currently when you do the intersection of two beams, STAAD finds the intersection without taking into account any offsets the beams may have. The result is you have to manually move the node at the intersection if offsets are involved. This is maddening. Before it computes the intersection point it should adjust the beam end points (internally of course) for any offsets.

  • I suppose as long as it gets done but I'm not sure why you think that's a better way. You have to do the math to figure out what the offset is so why not just move the joint by that much? Also, I did a test. Everything does agree as one would expect, except for the displacement of the node at the intersection. The true node and the node that the intersection is offset from have slightly different values. Why would I want to know the displacement of some arbitrary point near the intersection? If you had a case where the offset was really large it might start to get significant.Offset Test.STD

  • Agreed. However, I would suggest it is handled by the node being created in the position it is, but offsets created and assigned to the ends of the beam at the intersection that keep the beams in the original alignment. Note that this is exactly the approach that is taken with the Physical Modelling routine that accounts for overlapping members, e.g.