Hi all. First, I’m still learning the program and I’m amazed by its user-friendliness and efficiency!
I was thinking about a feature I’ve encountered in some other software. I wonder if it would be possible to include a clear warning whenever a design, such as one that violates the 2:1 cantilever rule or involves a heavy, unbalanced point load, creates significant uplift? This flag could clearly state the required anchor capacity: the negative lbs force needing a hold-down.
I feel that the ‘governing’ percentage signal gives us a lot of confidence, making the process feel very reliable. However, this focus on material strength can be a downside because the critical uplift force—which governs the connection—is easily missed, hiding out in the diagrams as the ‘small print.’ It just feels like the ‘governing’ utilization isn’t giving us the full stability picture we need for safety.
Thanks for considering this! It would be a huge help for safe design.
Similar, but different, I would like to see an option for supports to resist compression only, and act like a cantilever when there is uplift.
There are times, especially in residential construction, where a two-span beam may have potential uplift at one end due to differing span geometry. A toe-nailed support or flexible plate connector might not resist any uplift.
The uplift deflection could be a tolerable/negligible value, but the analysis can only assume absolute zero movement. The resulting forces generated by the static analysis can be grossly over-estimated.
Sure, the support can be deleted and set as a cantilever, but that is not desirable. Load tracking and also consideration of different load cases can create problems with this approach.
Hi! Thanks for your feedback and suggestions here! I’ll take a look into the cantilever backspan check-it’s something I would always do as a side check cause my software never ran that check for my cantilever designs. I’ll add this to our feature request board and see if there’s an IBC or equivalent clause for this
