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This is the first of a two part guest post on structural analysis software by Luís Alves, Civil Engineer (five-year university degree - Structures and Constructions, “Instituto Superior Técnico”, Lisbon - Portugal). He can be reached at luis.alves(at)netcabo.pt

Part One - Overview

European countries like Portugal and Spain have made massive investments in infrastructures since their adhesion to the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1986. Whether one approves the option of quantitative investments or not - instead of an option more focused on R&D and human resources - it is a fact that these investments have contributed, in addition to the appearance of personal computers and their massive dissemination , to a popularization of the projects of structures.

In Portugal, the LNEC (“Laboratório Nacional de Engenharia Civil”) has progressively adapted such software to make it accessible to the structural engineering community through the commercialization of software for microcomputers and medium computers.

Indeed, the use of the LNEC’s central computer for structural analysis as well the commercialization of software were developed with great intensity until the begin of the 90’s. The later emergence of commercial software made that activity unnecessary, and that department of LNEC was closed in 1999.

However, this massification has led to a reduction of the the quality of projects, at least in the beginning. In fact, there are some risks in the automatic calculation of any structure such as: errors in the data inputs, not knowing the bases and validity limits previously defined by the programmers, and programming errors.

If on one side the structural data would be introduced (inputs) and on other side the results (outputs) would be obtained, it may have the risk of leaving hidden the used calculation methods and the accomplished simplifications, as in “black box”.

The human and economic consequences of a deficient structural conception can be serious. This also applies to any software utilization, even to the so called “web social-networking” algorithms. The users should be aware of the bases and limits that exist. Otherwise, it may have prejudicial consequences to the users, because of the lack of information and transparency.

Nowadays, the Building information modelling (BIM) can improve significantly the quality and the accuracy of the introduced information in the structural engineering programs.

In the BIM, the structural model is synchronous with the analytical model and the drawings are derived from the structural model. This is very important, because there are often disconnections between these models and the traditional drawings. The BIM also integrates all the multi-disciplinary tasks.

Generically, these are the different changes that this model introduces in the design process: (traditional drawing-based process / Building information modelling):

• drawing manual creation / drawing extraction
• multiple data sources / consistent data model
• costly revisions / improved decisions
• individual and sequential workflow / collaborative and parallel workflow
• built data / focus on life cycle data

• João Almeida Fernandes, “60 years of Lnec Structures Department activity”, rpee, Julho de 2007
• Lourenço et al, "Sobre o Cálculo Automático no Projecto de Estruturas de Betão Armado", 1999
• AECbytes "Building the Future" Article (July 18, 2007), AEC Technology Strategies 2007 Conference