Using Design Groups for targeted design

Tekla Structural Designer
Not version-specific
Tekla Structural Designer
design groups
Environment
Not environment-specific

Question:
How do I control and manipulate design groups?

Answer:
To allow for a quick and efficient design process, all concrete beams and columns (not walls) are automatically placed into Design Groups. The following example will take a look at how Design Groups are formed, the design procedure for a Design Group and how to design individual groups.
 

How are design groups formed?

Design Groups have no specific engineering data associated with them and are simply a unique name for a collection of similar frame elements. Various criteria are used to determine which group a particular element will be automatically placed in, but they can only belong to a single Design Group. For example, if you have a number of columns in a model, each with the same number of stacks, similar stack lengths, the same concrete and reinforcement material properties, and the same section sizes, rotations and alignments in the corresponding stacks, then they will likely all be placed in the same group. If any of these options vary between the columns, then they will be placed in multiple groups.

The Design Groups are formed as you build up the model, and can be viewed using the Groups tree in the project workspace. This window also allows you to do a variety of other things, including editing the groups and re-grouping the elements, which will be disscussed shortly.
 

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The design procedure for a design group

When a Design Group is designed, either as part of one of the design concrete processes or when a single group is designed, there are a series of steps that are completed:

  • One element in the design group is arbitrarily selected, and will have a full design completed on it for all of the results generated, by all analyses that have been undertaken, selecting sufficient reinforcement
  • The reinforcement selected in the first element will then also be applied to all other elements in that Design Group, so that they all have the same reinforcement arrangement
  • Each of these other elements will then have a check design completed on it:
    • If the reinforcement is sufficient, then it will move on to the next column and check the reinforcement for that element, and so on
    • If an element requires more reinforcement, then it will be increased and then the updated reinforcement will be applied to all other elements in the group
  • The process will then continue until all elements in the group have all been checked, resulting in them all having the same reinforcement arrangement
  • Once all elements have been designed in the group, a final check procedure will work out the utilisation ratios for all elements in the group to determine the 'critical' element, and an average utilisation ratio will be calculated for the purposes of reviewing group efficiency

 

Designing individual groups

Instead of repeating the full analysis and design process again, individual Design Groups can be designed to take into account their updated contents. This is done by right-clicking over the Design Group name and choosing Design Group. You can then check the designs of the members again to see the differences.

  • Use the Design Group command to re-design CRC4 and the newly created group
  • Use the Check Group command to compare the designs between the two
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