Hi,
Typically, to get end forces to design the connection for a certain beam size, a group is created and the bounding beam forces for the group are extracted using the "Beam Results - Beam Forces - Summary table" using the "Results Setup - Range - Group" drop down menu.
This gives the maximum and minimum Fx Fy Fz Mx My Mz for a selection of members meaning a common connection design can be used to cover that group.
This process can be achieved manually by setting up each selection and copying and pasting the results however when the number of groups is large this is time consuming and could be achieved much more efficiently with an OpenSTAAD function.
The function, "GetMemberEndForcesSummary" is proposed, and would take in an array of beam numbers and output a Variant Array of dimensions (0 to 12, 0 to 9) as per the attached image.
Best Regards,
Tom
Thank you for posting this idea. It seems a reasonable suggestion. It is however, subtly different to the data reported in the table that is displayed in the Post Processing. The tables report values of the results set. The default being the whole model, but the scope can be altered using one of the Range option in the Results Setup. Not the current selection.
I would perhaps extend the idea to provide methods for which it would be possible to get a list of members that have been assigned to a given property reference. In that way an alternative method to achieve the above would be to get the list, then using a loop routine get the results for each member and then only use those for nodes which are also used in a column so you dont account for beams that have been split to say to connect a secondary beam.