Tekla Structural Designer 2023 introduces significant enhancements to reactions display and reporting.

In previous releases, Foundation reactions were always reported with respect to (w.r.t.) the local axis system of the support, which follows that of the supported column or wall, giving results in the most convenient manner for foundation design. For buildings with several orientations on plan, and columns/ walls with different rotations/ orientations, these reactions could be in several directions, as illustrated below. This could present problems for engineers wishing to know the total reaction for a given single direction for several or all supports. Following customer feedback, a new feature is added in this release to optionally obtain reactions w.r.t. a single axis system, so they all have the same orientation. Here we give a brief overview of the new feature - for a full explanation with diagrams of the axis systems and examples, see the new Help Topic Working with foundation reaction axis systems. This enhancement is introduced in the 2023 Release.

• The new options apply to all areas of Reaction result reporting; Results View, Tabular Results View, Reports and Drawings

• Results View - a new Settings button is added to the Ribbon Reactions group - click this to open the new “Axis System for Reporting Reactions” dialog, as shown below.
  
• You can then select from three options:

  • Local Support - the default and the same manner of reporting as in previous releases using the same labels.

  • Building Direction (Dir1 and Dir2) - w.r.t. the Building Directions; the labels refer to Dir1 and Dir2

  • Angle to Global (X and Y) - w.r.t. a defined angle to the Global axes

    • For the special case of angle = 0; the reactions are labeled FX, FY and so on

    • Otherwise, when the angle is non-zero; ; the reactions are labeled dir1 and dir2

• With either of the new options enabled, all the reaction arrows and values are now given w.r.t. a single axis system, for example Building Direction (Dir1 and Dir2) as shown in the picture below for the same model shown at the beginning of this section. Note how the reaction option labels in the ribbon drop list change to reflect the selected option.

• Tabular Results View - the same reporting options dialog is added to the Model & Results > Tabular Results View ribbon for the “Foundation Reactions” results table, opened via the new “Table Options” ribbon button, as shown in picture below. Again the reported values are w.r.t. the selected Axis System option and the table header labels are changed to reflect this. You can have more than one such Tabular Results view open at the same time (using Duplicate View) with different axis options selected in each.

  • Note that, as with all the Tabular Data results tables, you can export this table to Excel should you wish to total the reactions for a particular direction.

• Reports - the new Axis System for Reporting Reactions options are added to the Settings dialog for the Foundation Reactions report chapter:

• Drawings- the new Axis System for Reporting Reactions options are added to the Drawing Settings for the Foundation Reactions drawing in Options > Planar Drawings: