Welcome to this, the 9th edition of Ozone, the Oasys newsletter. Whether your interest is in engineering, CAD or document management, you are sure to find something useful here.

Structural - exciting composite beams?

CAD - updates for BS 8666:2005

Document Management - Lloyds TSB join the 40,000 other Columbus users

Geotechnical - what's the lowdown?

Compos shakes up floor design

We are pleased to announce the release of Compos 8.0, our leading composite floor design software, which now allows you to 'excite' a floor for vibration checks and also 'dampen' the excitement using the Resotec damping system from Richard Lees Steel Decking.

Compos is the only software that can analyse the effects of using the Resotec Damping System, which improves the dynamic performance of floors in steel framed buildings. Innovative and highly effective, Resotec really puts floor vibration in its place. It sits cleverly between the steel beam and metal decking to dampen movement between them. Resotec is the result of long-term research into the problem of vibrating floors, combined with intensive, high-level development work by Richard Lees Steel Decking in partnership with Arup.

What makes Compos so unique?

• Footfall induced vibration checks - calculate the Response Factor
• Analyse the effects of using the Resotec Damping System from Richard Lees Steel Decking
• Tapering plate girders
• Variable slab widths and thicknesses

Plus everything that you expect from a quality composite beam design program:

• Analysis and design of composite steel beams, including automatic beam and stud selection
• Web penetrations and notches, with or without stiffeners
• Analyse and design to BS5950 ultimate and serviceability limit states, such as vibration frequency, deflection, beam weight and depth
• Link beams together, so that secondary beams load primaries

Compos Hints & Tips

Duplicating Members

Set-up a beam design once and make copies of it

Copying member properties

Do you want to change the same property on several beams? Here's how.

Footfall induced vibrations

How to switch on the Response Factor check

GSA Hints & Tips

Missing Eigenvalues

Sometimes modal analyses give this warning: should you be concerned?

Speeding up the analysis of large models

GSA 8.1 has some new solver options.

Dark printouts

Some printers do not print the pale grey backgrounds properly: switching off Stripey Output may help.

Sophisticated graphical selection tools

GSA can enable you to select a string of elements, the highest coincident node or element, nearly (but not quite) vertical elements, and entities with "out-of-range" contours.

Beam Section Summary output

You can output quantities from your model by section property.

Area loads

Grid loadings are a powerful way of loading up your model, but some situations can cause errors. Check these tips to ensure that you get results every time.

Task View

Quick ways to inspect and edit your model

Sorting Loads

Quickly rearrange your table of loads.

RC Slab checks

Automatic checks for your RC Slab design data to ensure that you get the right results.

CADrebar / CADtools

The next few weeks will see the release of the BS 8666:2005 updates for CADtools and CADrebar. Final testing is currently underway with our beta test sites and it is looking good. While the new BS 8666 has consigned to history the familiar bar types, it also sees the welcome return of many shape codes that were lost in the previous incarnation.

Mail Manager

Halcrow invest in Mail Manager

Halcrow Group, the international infrastructure planning, design and management consultancy, have selected Mail Manager to make the application of Quality Assurance (QA) to email easier and more consistent across their business worldwide.

Contact us to see how much your company can benefit and save from an Enterprise wide licence of Mail Manager.

Columbus reaches the Big 40!

Columbus now has over 40,000 registered companies in over 180 countries using its unique information management tools.

See http://www.oasys-software.com/columbus/ to find out what Columbus can do for your company.

Lloyds TSB - the Black Horse runs to Columbus

With over 2000 branches and other properties to look after, Lloyds TSB Group Property Management Department has quite a job on their hands. As it would be so easy to drown under the all the drawings and other documents involved in their work, it is no surprise that they turned to Columbus for help.

To organise everything, Lloyds TSB break projects down to manageable chunks and combine them together as necessary:

• Each project has a Columbus Directory Structure (CDS).
• Each Construction Manager has a CDS that includes their projects' CDS.
• Each Project Manager has a CDS that includes their Construction Managers' CDS (plus their own projects' CDS).
• Everyone's CDS also include the company standards CDS.

The end-result is that all project staff can see immediately which projects their subordinates are responsible for and can find the relevant project documents quickly without having to know their locations on the servers.

GEO Forthcoming Releases

Here is some advance news on what is coming next in the geotechnical suite.

Alp

Alp already offers load-deflection (p-y) curves based on the 15th edition of The American Petroleum Institute's Recommended Practice document. The next release of Alp will include the p-y curves of the 21st edition.

Drive

Drive, which analyses the stresses and displacements experienced during pile driving, is currently undergoing beta testing. It replaces its DOS namesake.

Frew

The next release of Frew will include a tool to generate node positions automatically: currently, the user has to position these nodes according to certain constraints. The program will also calculate the correct undrained pore pressures at each stage of an undrained analysis, which will make the process of switching from undrained to drained behaviour easier for you.

Pile

Due to popular demand, we will be releasing the Windows version of Pile. Like its DOS namesake, Pile calculates the vertical load carrying capacities of a range of individual piles in a layered soil deposit. If you are interested in helping with the Beta test program, please let us know.

Slope

Slope will include options to model a separate groundwater regime for each soil stratum.

Tunset

The new version of Tunset will ensure that it uses the appropriate analysis methods for different soil types. This will include a "wizard" for calculation of the volume loss percentage.

Siren and Sigraph

Our new programs for the analysis of non-linear seismic soil response are currently undergoing beta testing.

All Programs

Improvements to the textual output allow direct export to CSV, TXT, RTF and HTML files.

Are you getting as much as you can out of your software?

Do you have new staff who need training or experienced staff members that want to step up to that next level?

At Oasys, we offer a series of training courses to help you to get the most out of the programs, with something suitable for beginners to experts.

We can also tailor courses to meet your needs. Whether you require classroom based training at our purpose-built facility in London, or on-site at your premises, we are happy to help. Contact us at oasys@arup.com to arrange your training.

Oasys Limited, founded in 1976, is the software house of Arup, a global organization of consulting engineers, planners and project managers working in all areas of the built environment, infrastructure, transportation, water, vehicle engineering etc.

Oasys Limited
Central Square
Forth Street
Newcastle-Upon-Tyne
NE1 3PL

Email: oasys@arup.com
Phone: +44 (0) 191 238 7559
Fax: +44 (0) 191 238 7555
Web: http://www.oasys-software.com/

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