ASDIP CONCRETE is a structural engineering software for design of concrete members. It includes the design of multi-span continuous beams subject to a number of different types of loads, based on the latest ACI 318 provisions.
The design of concrete beams involves the calculation of shears and moments for the factored load combinations to design the reinforcement accordingly. But what happens when you have completed the design of all the beams included in your project? How do you summarize all this information to show it in a readable way in your drawings? Fortunately ASDIP CONCRETE includes a new feature where the Beam Schedule can be generated after you have completed your beam design process. This document shows the required steps to generate a Beam Schedule in ASDIP CONCRETE.
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When is a Beam Schedule necessary?
Once the design of a beam has been completed, you know the beam size, the longitudinal bars, and the stirrups along the beam. If you are designing just one or two beams, probably you can show a beam elevation for each beam in your drawings. However, a typical concrete building may have several dozens of beams to be designed. In ASDIP CONCRETE you can model as many beams as necessary in a single project file, so you may end up with a project that includes many beams. In this case it's necessary to show all this information in your drawings in a more organized way.
Now ASDIP CONCRETE can generate a Beam Schedule, which is a pre-formatted table that shows the most relevant information about every beam in your project. This feature may save you hours of your time if you copy the beam information manually, one by one, and generate the schedule by yourself. The image below shows the Project Manager of ASDIP CONCRETE. In this example the project includes seven continuous beams BM-1 to BM-7, but even in this very simple case the manual generation of a beam schedule would be time-consuming.
How do you generate a Beam Schedule in ASDIP CONCRETE?
When all the beams of your project have been designed it's time to generate the Beam Schedule to include in your drawings. To do so, go to Project > Schedule in the menu bar. This will launch the window shown below where the headers of the beam schedule are visible, as well as some buttons at the top. To start the Beam Schedule generation click on the Generate Schedule button. Note that for long schedules the software will add a vertical scroll bar.
Once the Beam Schedule has been generated, you can Print Preview or Print the schedule directly, using the buttons at the top. To go back to the Project Manager simply click on the Close button. The image below shows a continuous beam elevation with the meaning of the letters used in the schedule.
Takeaway
ASDIP CONCRETE includes the design of multi-span continuous beams, and multiple beams can be included in a single project file. A new feature allows the generation of the Beam Schedule, which summarizes the information of all your beams in a tabular format.
For our collection of blog posts about concrete design please visit Structural Concrete Design.
Detailed information is available about this structural engineering software by visiting ASDIP CONCRETE. For engineering background, see the post Continuous Concrete Beam Design: A Structural Challenge. For a beam design example see Continuous Beam Design Example Using ASDIP CONCRETE.
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Best regards,
Javier Encinas, PE
ASDIP Structural Software