Applies To
	Product(s):	STAAD.Pro
	Version(s):	ALL
	Environment:	ALL
	Area:	Modeling Solutions
	Subarea:	Geometry
	Original Author:	Sye Chakraborty, Bentley Technical Support Group

 I am having connectivity issues between the beams and plates and would like to know what causes these and how I could take care of the problem.

 
Here are some points that you should pay attention to during the modeling

 

Improperly connected plates  

For two adjacent plates to be properly connected to each other, they much meet at the corner nodes. To figure out if the plates are properly connected or not, you can go to the Tools | Check Improperly Connected Plates which will provide a list of such plates. When a node that belongs to one of the plates, simply lies on the edge of an adjacent plate there is no connection between the plates at that node. You need to modify the mesh such that proper connectivity is maintained. You may refer to the document improperly_connected_plates.doc for details on what causes these kind of problems and how to fix those. You may use the link at the end of this article to download a zip file that would contain this document.

 

Beam Plate connectivity problem 

To establish proper connectivity between beams and adjacent plates, you need to ensure that the beams and plates are connected at their end nodes. The end nodes for beam elements should be corner nodes for the plate elements for connectivity to be established.  Improper connections can be tracked if you go to Tools | Check Beam Plate Connectivity which would list out all the beams and plates that are not connected properly to each other. You may refer to the documents improperly_connected_beam_and_plates.doc and examples of improper beam plate connectivity.doc for details on what causes these kind of problems and how to fix those. You may use the link at the end of this article to download a zip file that would contain these documents.

 

It is important to note that to get a correct analysis, various structural entities need to be properly connected to each other. Else there will be no load transfer between these entities and you may also end up with instabilities in the model.

 

For more information on this topic please use the link below

Connectivity problems and their solutions