Assignment 3 seemed to go fairly well for most of you, although many of you mentioned that it was a difficult assignment, particularly for those not in the structural concentration. I think that you all have the typical assignment comments down by now for the most part. Follow the rubric, fill out every section, make educated attempts, etc. I'm going to focus my comments here on some general structural things that many of you seem to have missed or struggled with.
-Many of you only showed beams spanning from column to column in your steel framing plans. In typical cases you also need beams spanning in between these beams. This is because a normal floor or roof system can only span 5-10 feet. If your columns are more than this distance apart, more beams are needed to support your slab.
-Typically structural engineers do not like things interfering with their structural members. This is because their calculations are based upon having the full capacity of the shape. Cutting out a section of a steel beam or column obviously decreases its capacity. So while it may be possible, it should be avoided unless absolutely necessary, as it will lead to complicated calculations and larger structural members. A good example of this would be not putting windows in a shear wall, as they disrupt the flow of the loads through the wall.
-Almost all of you modeled your building in SAP. This is completely fine, but a bit unusual to me. My (admittedly limited) experience has been that SAP is best used to analyze single beams and smaller structures in cases where you have complex loading or need very in depth analysis of what is happening in a smaller area. Programs like RAM Structural are more often used to model whole buildings and size members, columns, and foundations. SAP is fine, but those of you that are interested may want to explore other programs in the future.
Overall you all did well. If there are any questions or comments, let us know.
Best,
Steve and Brad
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