Is it possible to expose an OpenSTAAD function to retrieve member forces (at a specified member end) in the Global Coordinate System?
I understand that there exists a function to retrieve the member forces in the Local Coordinate System and I agree that these forces can then be transformed to Global Coordinate System mathematically. But this comes with two problems.
Interpretation of the results based on the beta angle assign varies. Hence, it is error prone.
It's a tedious job (even programmatically) to translate and combine when multiple members connect at a joint.
Being able to retrieve the member forces in global directions helps in designing connections, providing joint forces when one structure interfaces with another structure by others.
Here is a sample spreadsheet that shows how to convert results from one axes to another. I trust this helps.
Thank you for posting this idea. I can understand that the end forces reported from the analysis are in local axes and there may be situations where it would be helpful to report the forces in some alternative axes system. Just considering your use case would indicate that simply reporting them in the global axes would be insufficient, consider when the column is inclined or rotated or both. So essentially you are suggesting that we provide a method for reporting analysis results from a user defined rotation. This would seem more suited to a macro or a part of the tool you are developing using OpenSTAAD..