Description:
Currently, STAAD deletes all analysis results whenever the command file is modified, even for changes that do not affect the structural analysis—such as adding comments, defining groups, or creating envelopes. This forces users to rerun the entire model unnecessarily, increasing time and computational effort.
Suggestion:
Optimize STAAD so that only modifications impacting analysis or design trigger recalculation. Non-structural edits (e.g., comments, group & envelope definitions) should not invalidate existing results. This would improve workflow efficiency without compromising accuracy.
Thank you for logging this idea. This idea certainly has merit as it is not uncommon for models to contain data, which when modified does not impact every part of the solution. This is most often associated with design results in which changing design parameters has no impact on say the analysis results. So the action to take away from this is decoupling the design solutions from the analysis. This will allow for more rapid prototyping without unduly introducing large delays whilst the analysis is repeated despite not being impacted by a change in the design. The only challenge will need further investigation is how does this correlate with the fact that the output file is a single representation of the actions defined by the data in the input file. However, the input file has changed. What happens to the output file as it will no longer be a true reflection of the current data? However, this should not be insurmountable, but certainly needs thinking about in detail.