When I try to do an aluminum design, I get a message "ALUMINUM CODE IS NOT SUPPORTED"What's going on?
The American Aluminum code is not one of the codes available with the standard STAAD.Pro package. It is an add-on item, and costs additional money. If you have not specifically purchased this additional code, you will not be able to access this code at run-time.
If you are not sure whether your installed copy of STAAD.Pro is supposed to contain this code, you can do the following. From the Start button, select Programs - STAAD.Pro 2001 - License Administrator. In the Window which comes up, select Tasks - Query License System - Check Active Licensing system. You will get a message similar to
"Current active copy protection system is Hasp"
Click on OK. Another window will come up with 2 buttons - Check and Cancel. Click on Check. A set of information will appear in the background window. Look for a category called "Lock supports following STAAD components". Check whether ALUMINUM(US) is one of the components in that list. If it is not in that list, it means the lock supplied to you does not support that code.
If it does indicate that you have the ALUMINUM code, do the following. Close down the License Administrator program. From the Analyze menu, select Run Analysis. In the "Select Analysis Engine" dialog box, tick the option "Change Design Codes' , and select US+ALUMINUM. Click on the Save button. Then, click on Run Analysis. If there are no errors in your input file, you should get a successful run.