finite elements engine

Are you ready for the Eurocodes?

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Are you ready for the Eurcodes? GRAITEC’s  Advance Design 2012 is!  The latest version includes all of the UK National Annexes for EC0, EC1 (climatic), EC2 (concrete), EC3 (steel) and EC5 (timber).


 Many top UK engineering consultancies have already decided to move over from British Standards to the Eurocodes and Advance Design is making this transition very easy.A very intuitive and easy to use CAD interface takes the stress out of model creation and this is made even easier with intelligent BIM connections to many industry standard file types including IFC, SDNF, PSS, CIS2 and DXF.  Fast finite element analysis and design with automatic mesh generation and member optimisation allow for many different iterations of you model in quick succession.  Easy to create result reports and documentation in many formats including DOC, PDF and EXCEL. Advance Design is the complete package for Eurocode Design.

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Advance Design Service Pack 1

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Advance Design® BIM system is dedicated to structural engineers who require a comprehensive solution for simulating and optimizing all their projects. It includes: a user-friendly structural modeler, automatic load and combination generators, a powerful FEM analysis engine (static, dynamic, time history, non linear, buckling, large displacement analysis, etc.), comprehensive wizards for designing concrete and steel members according to Eurocodes, efficient result post-processing and automatic report generators.

Service Pack 1 of Advance Design 2011 has been released and includes many corrections and enhancements for the implementation of the Eurocodes:

 Eurocode 1 

Improvements to combination management: option to group several load cases, Psi coefficients in the property list of families, option to define several live load types in the same model…

Advance Design 2011 Service Pack 1

More detailed clause references in the “Description of climatic loads” report:

Advance Design 2011 Service Pack 1

The “exceptional snow fall” field is now automatically activated when set on A2, B1, B2, C2 and D snow areas (see 1.1 (3) from French National Annex) (Ref. 11381).

Advance Design 2011 Service Pack 1

 Eurocode 2 

Improvement: ADVANCE Design can return values for both concrete stresses and steel stresses.

Advance Design 2011 Service Pack 1

A new option has also been added in order to compute stresses according to French “Recommandations professionnelles”:

Advance Design 2011 Service Pack 1

When activated, ADVANCE Design will use the same αe value for the three SLS combinations (characteristic, frequent, quasi-permanent):

Advance Design 2011 Service Pack 1

A new field, “Equivalent diameter Φeq”, has been added in the concrete properties of linear and planar elements.

Advance Design 2011 Service Pack 1

After the calculation, the values for Sr,max, ξsm-ξcm or wk can be displayed.

Advance Design 2011 Service Pack 1

The crack width is calculated taking into account the theoretical reinforcement value for the reinforcement ratio calculation. In the Advance Design 2012 release this feature will be improved with the option to define the reinforcement bars on linear and planar elements.

Improvement: The Young’s modulus for concrete materials is computed with the formula from EN1992-1-1 (Ref. 11617).

Advance Design 2011 Service Pack 1

Advance Design Meshing

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Advance Design includes a powerful finite elements engine, enhanced with the newest technologies. A simpler and faster automated meshing of complex structures is possible.

Meshing is an essential operation for the design calculation with the finite elements method. It separates the design elements in finite elements to refine the calculation results.

Advance Design meshing

The extended mesh capabilities of Advance Design allow you to apply and refine the meshing of each design element, and results in a quality analysis of your design.

Advanced control of global meshing:Delaunay and Grid mesh by quadrangles, triangles and combined mesh shapes

  • 2 meshing algorithms: Delaunay and Grid
  • Ability to mesh solely by triangles, by quadrangles or using a combination of mesh shapes
  • Include the loads in the meshing process
  • Definition of default mesh elements size

Extended capabilities for application of local mesh parameters:

  • Progressive mesh at the beginning, end, center or at both ends of design elements
  • Different meshing parameters for each side of planar elements
  • Different meshing parameters for each side of planar elementsAdvance Design: display the mesh for a certain part of the structure, keeping the rendering settings

Various display options for the meshed design:

  • Display mesh on the entire design or on a selection
  • Display / hide nodes, mesh IDs, number of meshes
  • Define the mesh node size
  • Display the mesh along with different rendering styles and display parameters (perspective view, shadow, luminosity, transparency, etc.)